PAST MASTERS

TWENTY-ONE

March 2021

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

Contents

1: The Glasgow Smasher / Guy Gilpatric

2: The Dancer in the Crystal / Francis Flagg

3: The Superman of Dr Jukes / Francis Flagg

4: A Will and a Way / W. W. Jacobs

5: Chicago Confetti / William J Rollins Jr

6: The Devil’s Fire / H Bedford-Jones

7: Harbor Hazard / H. Bedford-Jones

8: The Gravity Experiment / J. U. Giesy

9: The Machine Man of Ardathia / Francis Flagg

10: The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds / Francis Flagg

11: A Knight-Errant / Katharine Tynan

12: He Stoops To Conquer / Albert Kinross

13: Not on the Bill / J. U. Giesy

14: The Banshee / Anonymous

15: The Amazing Power / Miles J. Breuer

16: The Mentanicals / Francis Flagg

Cumulative Index

_________________

1: The Glasgow Smasher

Guy Gilpatric

1896–1950

The Saturday Evening Post Aug 15 1931

CAPTAIN BALL crumpled up the telegram which had come from the Inchcliffe Castle's owners, and tossed it through the saloon porthole into the River Clyde.

"Hmph!" he grunted. "Well, I fancy that means we've seen the last of Mr. Ogilvie. That is— well, I mean to say— hmph!"

"Aye," agreed Mr. Glencannon, tilting back his head and carefully tucking his napkin in around the edge of his shore-going celluloid collar, "I get yere point exockly, captain— i'deed, I get yere point. Ye mean that Muster Ogilvie has forever gone fra' amongst our happy midst. But then, o' coorse, there's nowt that can be done aboot it."

"I know there ain't," said Captain Ball. "And that's just it. It's time them ruddy meddlers in the office would let my ship alone for once. Why don't they take men out of the Hardcliffe, or the Marlecliffe, or the Thorncliffe, or some of them other ships, hey? But oh, no, they've always got to pick on me!" And seizing his spoon, he attacked his soup as though bailing out a sinking lifeboat.

"A-weel," said Mr. Glencannon, as audibly and with evident relish he groomed the fringes of his mustache with his lower lip, "Muster Ogilvie's leaving us is vurra unconveenient, beyont a doot. But betwixt oursel's, captain, I'd just as soon we had a mon wi' more streength o' choracter to montain the deescipline. Wi' that Yonkee bruiser, Radway, and the rest, there's a tough crowd i' the stokehold. Ne'ertheless, I conseeder Ogilvie's promotion a pairsonal compliment to mysel'. Why, come to think o' it, captain, he's my fourth or fufth second or theerd to become a feerst or second!"

"'E's your which and your wot?" inquired Mr. Montgomery, glancing up from a copy of Beelzebub's Broth, official organ of the International League of Militant Teetotalers. "That is, 'oo is? Good lawks, I do wish you'd talk sense for a chynge, instead of like a blooming parable!"

Mr. Glencannon considered him haughtily. "I was just remarking," he said, "that Muster Ogilvie, our worthy theerd engineer who has been promoted to seecond of the Swalecliffe Castle, is by no means the feerst mon to benefeet by my training and emeerge full-fledged fra' my engine room to embark on a braw career o' his ain. But aside fra' that, Muster Mate, and overlooking the rudeness o' yere tone, I must inform ye that the talking bird ye refeer to is no' the parable but the parakeet, the whuch doesna' talk onyway."

"Heh? Well, my word, there's where you're both wrong!" declared Captain Ball, puffing out his cheeks scornfully. "Paraclete is a sort of a fancy inlaid floor. I shouldn't wonder if it's probably mocking birds that you chaps are trying to think of. Mrs. Ball has a cageful of 'em— perky little beggars. They go tootle-tweetle-twee, sort of, except in the mating season, when they say 'twee' twice. But— er— let's see now— oh, yes, we were discussing about a third engineer. Well, have you got anybody in mind to take Ogilvie's place, Mr. Glencannon?"

"Nary a soul," said the chief. "Nobody at a', sir. But thanks to the foortunate ceercumstonce o' our being here in Glesga, I onteecipate no slichtest deefficulty i' finding a lad to fill the berth. Engineers in Glesga are thicker than sneak thieves in London."

"M'ybe yer right," observed Mr. Montgomery. "But for my part, I 'adn't never noticed that Glasgow Scotchmen was any thicker than the rest of 'em— only drunker. But look; 'ere's a ray of 'ope fer yer disserlute city. Just read this!"

He unfolded a copy of the Glasgow Sentinel and pointed to a headline:

SMASHER WRECKS

THREE MORE BAR ROOMS

NO CLUES, SAY POLICE,

AS FANATIC CONTINUES RAIDS

"Now that," said Mr. Montgomery sententiously, "is wot I calls a step in the right direction. I'd like to see 'im smarsh h'every blinking bar and booze shop in the British Isles, I would! It says 'ere in the pyper that the International League of Militant Teetotalers, of which I 'ave the honor of being a charter member of, is advertising their fymous standing offer to pay fer this Smasher chap's legal defense if 'e gets nabbed, along with a bounty of five pund apiece fer h'each and h'every devil's den 'e may 'ave wrecked meanwhile."

"Oh, fuddlesticks!" said Mr. Glencannon. "Please, please, Muster Mate, spare us further o' yere boorish interrooptions." And turning again to Captain Ball, "Noo that spring is i' the air," he explained, "there's mony a new ship sliding doon the ways oot o' the yards between here and Clydebank. A muckle o' keen young lads wi' their Board o' Trade junior certeeficates who ha' been working i' the yards all winter ha' bruck oot i' a rash to go to sea again. I was thinking I'd tak' a stroll through Vickery's Yards, and also MacCandless, Todd & Shelbourne's, this vurra afternoon."

"Good idea," agreed Captain Ball. "I mean to say, good idea. A touch of young blood won' do this ship a bit of harm."

"Aye," agreed Mr. Glencannon, "such is my ain theory. And noo, sir, as soon as I've consumed this vurra nosty loomp o' offal whuch the cook calls topioca pudding, I'll gae ashore to see what I can see."

Having looked into his room for his cap and a drop or so of Duggan's Dew to sustain the inner man, Mr. Glencannon stepped ashore and headed along Dumbarton Road toward the shipyards. Beside the black and oily river, a forest of cranes and derricks rose up into the clouds of soft-coal smoke which darkened the sky. A hundred pneumatic rivet guns were whanging against resounding steel hull plates, and the very earth trembled as in gushing fountains of sparks giant steam trip hammers plunged down upon white-hot forgings.

"Ah, losh, what a delichtful scene," murmured Mr. Glencannon. "I' a' the world there's nowt to motch the loveliness o' Clydebank." And as he strolled along he hummed:

"Roaming i' the gloaming by the bonnie banks o' Clyde....

Oh, it's lovely roaming i' the glo-ho-ho-ming!"

After he had roamed a block or so, however, thirst and fatigue overcame him, so he turned into a combination liquor store and public house labeled The Riveters' Rest. Despite the placid implication of the title, it was abundantly apparent from the condition of the interior that the riveters, or someone, had lately been restless. The floor of the bar parlor was ankle deep with broken glass, and the bar itself had been uprooted from its foundations and toppled upon its side.

The publican, a portly gentleman whose left eye stuck out like a doorknob and was rapidly assuming a cerulean hue, was pouring forth his woes to a policeman.

Mr. Glencannon turned a table right side up, retrieved a chair which dangled from the shattered chandelier, and settled himself. He sniffed appreciatively the fumes which wafted from the floor.

"Ahem!" he said. "May I interrupt ye, sir, to ask for a spot o' Duggan's Dew o' Kirkintilloch?"

"Ye may," said the publican gloomily. "But ye'll ha' a fat chance o' getting it unless ye gae doon on yere knees and collect it wi' a spoonge."

"Why, whate'er do ye mean?"

"I mean," said the publican, "that the Glesga Smosher, a raving manioc, came in here at noontime and bruck every last bottle o' whusky I had i' the place, to say nowto' what other domages ye can plainly see."

"Oh, dearie me, how vurra deeprussing," said Mr. Glencannon. "And what did he do it for?"

"That we dinna ken, sir," said the policeman. "Some say he's a teetotaler and some says not. He's running amuck and smoshing up pubs throughout the city o' Glesga."

"Ah, and sae it's as bad as that, is it?" asked Mr. Glencannon in alarm. "Weel, I'd better hasten on my way before he smoshes them a'!"

Farther along the road he came to the Tailshaft Tavern. One of its windows was boarded up and a card on the door announced that the place was closed for repairs. On the opposite corner a crowd was standing in front of a place which bore a sign The Gauge and Gasket Bar, Wat MacTavish, Proprietor— Wat Knows Wat's Wat! From the ruins of this establishment streams of whisky were trickling dismally across the sidewalk.

"Foosh!" said Mr. Glencannon in amazement. "Ne'er did I think I'd live to see the day when I cudna get a drink i' Glesga. These temperance fanotics will cause the doonfall o' the Empire yet! But noo, I micht as weel fight back my theerst and gae along aboot my business."

Messrs. Vickery's yards were a short distance down the street. The keel of a liner was in the cradles and the place was seething with activity. Mr. Glencannon strolled into one of the engine shops and paused beside a lathe on which a Diesel crankshaft was slowly turning. The building reeked of rancid lard oil and was filled with the throb of mighty machinery and the agonized scream of metal beneath the tool. Three or four mechanics were at work on the crankshaft job, and supervising them was a young man who at once took Mr. Glencannon's fancy.

He was a short, beefy youth, with very red hair and pale blue eyes fringed with a sparse growth of white lashes. Somehow he gave the impression of having recently been boiled. So broad and square were his shoulders that he seemed to have no neck. About midway down from his elbows, his forearms suddenly flanged out into hands of approximately the size and shape of ping-pong bats. His front teeth were prominent, and such was their conformation that their owner was enabled to spit between them in a most spectacular manner. It was apparent that he had his crew of machinists thoroughly cowed.

"Losh," said Mr. Glencannon, observing that the red youth was wearing a suit of seagoing dungarees and that an oily white officer's cap was perched on the back of his head. "Yon's a likely lad— a likely lad i'deed!" And stepping forward, he touched the youngster upon the shoulder. "A vurra guid day to ye, young mon," he said, "and what micht be yere name?"

At his touch, the other wheeled around as though stung. In his hand, poised for action, he held a fourteen-inch spanner.

"A vurra guid day to yersel', ye meddlesome old walrus," he answered, measuring Mr. Glencannon with a suspicious eye. "And as for my name, what the heel do ye want to know it for?"

"Ah, noo," said Mr. Glencannon, piqued at this rebuff. "Do ye be a bit more coorteous, ye oaf, or I'll raise a hand to ye. Fra' the look o' yere ugly snout, I'd judge ye'd be a copious bleeder."

"Pairhops I wud and pairhops I wudna'," was the sullen answer. "But ye show bad judgment, muster, when ye sneak up behind a body and tap him on the shoulder lik' a dom policeman. Noo, what is it ye want?"

"I want what I asked ye for i' the feerst place. What micht be yere name?"

"Weel," said the youth, "it micht be Lloyd Geortch and it micht be Maurice Chivvaleer, but it's no' the one nor the other. My name's Duncan Glencannon, if that means onything to ye."

"Duncan Glencannon!" exclaimed the engineer. "Duncan Gle— Weel, weel, my ain dear lad, how are ye— how are ye?"

"Tak' yere hands off me!" said the beefy one, backing away. "I dinna foncy yere whuskery mug, and I willna' be pawed lik' a terrier. Who are ye, onyway?"

"Swith, lad!" beamed Mr. Glencannon, spreading his arms in a welcoming gesture. "Dinna ye ken me, Duncan? I'm yere uncle— yere ain dear Uncle Colin!"

"Oh," said Duncan, taking the news calmly enough, but becoming a bit more civil. "Weel, I suppose I micht ha' recognized ye fra' yere breath. I dimly remeember ye dondling me on yere knee when I was a bairn in Taychreggen, and me howling because I thocht ye were a deevil or a warlock. Weel, come to look at ye noo, I dinna wonder! How are ye, Uncle Colin— how are ye— I mean, aside fra' being in yere cups?"

"Tush, lad, tush," said Mr. Glencannon in mild reproof. "I've had nowt o' steemulant save a nip or twa aboard ship after lunch. Ye're confusing me wi' yere late lameented fother, a pious and scholarly mon whose failing, aloss, was alcohol."

"Aye, and bross polish, liniment and whate'er else he cud find aroond the house," agreed young Duncan, his pale eye kindling with resentful reminiscence. "Mother always said that if there was ever mon i' Scotland who cud drink more than a Glencannon, it was another Glencannon. And then she'd always mention you, Uncle Colin."

"Ah, did she, noo?" inquired Mr. Glencannon, deeply touched. "Weel, the puir guid woman must ha' been thinking o' the MacFeergus Glencannons o' Inverfarigaig i' the Monadhliadths, or pairhops our ilk fra' aroond Ballachulish and Achnacloich— a branch o' the clan conseesting almost entirely o' sots. And speaking o' whuch, what is the news o' Old Jock Glencannon, o' Milngavie?"

"Losh, him!" answered Duncan disgustedly. "The thoondering old rip had his hoonderd-and-fufth beerthday aboot a month ago, and he looked tough and braw as ever, worse luck! A quart o' oatmeal, a quart o' whusky and a packet o' snoof a day— that's his diet the noo."

"Weel," said Mr. Glencannon, "I'm glad to hear that the old patriarch has stopped deesipating and is beginning to look after his health. But what aboot his will and teestament, Duncan lad? Do ye still stond as his heir?"

"I do," said Duncan, "and a heel o' lot o' guid it does me! Why, bless ye, Uncle Colin, I do believe Old Jock'll carry on for another theerty years at least. And wi' whusky costing what it does, ye can easily feegure that there won't be a farthing left to inherit. Why, on his vurra beerthday, be dom if he didn't walk on foot clean in here fra' Milngavie and back— eight weary miles each way— to buy three cases o' Duggan's Dew because they wudna' deeliver it to him on mail order."

"What did he walk for?" asked Mr. Glencannon.

"To save the tram fare, o' coorse," said Duncan. "And then, besides, he knew vurra weel that a' the neighbors alang the road wud invite him in for a beerthday snort. By the time he got back hame he thocht he was an eagle, so he tuk off his breeks and spent the entire nicht hooting i' a tree."

"Ooch, a grand old choracter!" said Mr. Glencannon reverently. "I'deed, he's the last o' the braw geeneration that made Scotland what she is today!"

"Aye, pairhops," agreed Duncan, but without enthusiasm. "But noo, Uncle Colin, what is it ye've come here to the shop aboot?"

Mr. Glencannon explained his mission. "Ye can get yere time from the paymoster when ye quit here tonicht," he suggested. "And tomorrow morning I'll meet ye at the shipping office where we'll sign ye on. We're ha'ing some refitting o' our boilers, and we sail aroond the middle o' the week. Noo, what aboot it, lad— what aboot it?"

"Weel," mused Duncan, scratching his red head and from between his front teeth emitting a jet which sizzled as it struck the heated lathe tool, "I rather foncy I'll tak' ye up, Uncle Colin. I'd been thinking o' going to sea for the past seeveral weeks, and while I hated to gang awa' and leave Old Jock to drink up all my foortune, I think I've took the proper steps to prevent him. There's one or two little motters I must attend to tonicht, but I'll meet ye at the shipping office feerst thing tomorrow."

ii

A LATE HOUR that evening found Mr. Glencannon homeward bound in a state which might be best described as scrambled. He had fallen in with friends, and in their company quaffed deeply, but during the course of the quaffing he had managed to lose nine pounds and some odd shillings at cribbage. As in the misty moonlight he picked his way between the burst boilers, rusty cylinders and other massive junk that littered the shipyard in which the Inchcliffe Castle lay, he felt that his body was floating and that his soul was heavy as lead.

"Nine poonds!" he was repeating mournfully to himself. "Nine poonds! Ah, the swundlers!"

Suddenly he became aware of several figures lurking in the shadows of a shed. Instinctively his hand dropped to the neck of a quart bottle which chanced to be in his coat pocket.

"Ah-ha, 'tis the Afghans!" he muttered. "Clear yersel' for action, Glencannon, and smite them where they look the biggest!"

The beam of a flashlight darted into his face. Instantly there was a sound like a muffled explosion as the quart bottle descended upon a bowler hat. With a thin, whispery moan, he of the flashlight and bowler wilted down upon the cobblestones. Springing to the hub of a giant propeller which lay in the weeds beside the roadway, Mr. Glencannon brandished his bottle and defied the enemy.

"Hoot! "he challenged:

"Come one, come all, this prop shall fly

Fra' its firm base as soon as I!"

Observing that none of the hostile party seemed inclined to rush him, however, he reversed his weapon, pulled the cork and treated himself to a long and gurgling swig.

"Weel," he said, wiping his chin, "what's the next move, ye roofians?"

"Noo, just a minute, sir," came a voice from the group gathered around the fallen figure. "I'm afraid we've made a mistake, and we beg your pardon. But if ye'll just hold on a bit till the sergeant regains consciousness, we'd be greatly obliged to ye."

"The sairjunt!" repeated Mr. Glencannon. "D'ye mean ye're policemen? Swith, I mistok ye for cutpurses!"

"We're deteectives fra' C.I.D., Victoria Street Police Station.... How's it noo, Sergeant Campbell? Can ye stond up?"

"Unh," said the sergeant, staggering to his feet and tugging at the remains of his bowler. "Oh, my head!... MacBride, just put the light on yon gentlemon again— that is, if he has no objections."

"None whatsoeever!" said Mr. Glencannon, thrusting his hand into the breast of his coat and striking a Napoleonic attitude. "But wud ye mind telling me the cause o' all this midnicht maneuvering?"

"We're looking for a dangerous lunatic," explained the sergeant— "a chap who has busted up eleeven booze shops i' the past week. We've got his deescruption, and we had a tip that he was off this ship, the Inchcliffe Castle. And so—"

"And so ye got yersel' hit on the head fra' shining yere light under the wrong bushel," said Mr. Glencannon. "Weel, mistakes will happen, sairjunt— mistakes will happen! Onfoortunately fer yersel', I had finoncial reveerses earlier this evening, sae my temper is none o' the best. Aye," he sighed, "nine poonds— nine poonds deeparted!"

Thus having reminded himself of his losses, he nodded a gloomy good night to the policemen and started up the Inchcliffe Castle's gangway. He was perhaps halfway across it when an idea struck him.

"Losh!" he exclaimed. "Eleeven smoshed saloons! Muster Montgomery's Teetotal Society paying a five-poond bounty for each! Eleeven times five mak's fufty-five poonds!... Ho, police!" he shouted, dashing back through the yard in pursuit of the officers. "Police! Police!"

From out of the gloom whistles shrilled threads of sound, and there was the tattoo of running feet.

"Here, sir! Here!" shouted a detective. "This way, sergeant!"

"What is it? Did ye see him?" panted Sergeant Campbell, a Webley pistol in one hand and the flashlight in the other. "Which way'd he go?"

"He's standing richt before ye, sairjunt," proclaimed Mr. Glencannon with a dramatic gesture. "I confess! I— I am the Glesga Smosher!" And steeling himself to the sacrifice, he shattered his bottle of whisky upon the cobblestones.

Sergeant Campbell grinned, chuckled, and then laughed aloud. "Ye'd better go back aboard your ship and sleep your jag off, muster," he advised. "Ye don't look, smell or act like no temperance fanotic to me!"

"Weel, I am just the same!" insisted Mr. Glencannon. "I'm yere mon, sairjunt, sae do ye tak' me i' charge at once."

"Oh, come, come, go aboard and sober up!" urged the detective, patting Mr. Glencannon on the arm. "Ye'll feel better in the morning."

"Noo, dinna attempt to wheedle me," Mr. Glencannon warned him. "I'm no' a mon to be cajoled, as the loomp on yere head will teestify. I demond that ye arrest me, Sairjunt Campbell. As a British subject, I firmly assert my rights. Put the hondcuffs on me this vurra minute, or there'll be enough eggs on yere head to feed omelets to the whole dom Glesga police force!"

"Noo see here, m'lad," said Sergeant Campbell, "I'm a patient mon, but don't start flinging your weight aboot. Just what micht be yere name, anyway?"

"Weel," said Mr. Glencannon, striving to recall and repeat the neat sarcasm of his nephew, Duncan, "it micht be Glencannon, and it micht be Glencannon, but it's no' Lloyd Geortch or that other fellow."

"Glencannon!" exclaimed Sergeant Campbell. "So yere name's Glencannon, is it? By gad, men, take him along! I do believe we've got the Smosher after all!"

iii

ARRIVED AT the Victoria Street Police Station, Mr. Glencannon was hustled up to the second floor and into the presence of Inspector MacNab.

"Well, we've landed him, sir!" announced Sergeant Campbell proudly. "Here's Glencannon, and by his ain confession he's the Smosher!"

"Aye!" declared Mr. Glencannon, swaying a bit unsteadily, and endeavoring to disguise a hiccup as a defiant toss of the head. "I am he! Doon wi' the demon rum!"

Inspector MacNab stared in amazement. "What?" he asked. "Another Glencannon? Why, heaven bless us, sergeant, we've had two Glencannons in here already. The young one admits writing the anonymous letters to the pub keepers, threatening to smash their places because they'd delivered whisky to the old one. The old one admits threatening to smash their places because they didn't. But both of 'em deny doing any of the smashing, and the pub keepers say that neither of 'em looks anything like the Smasher."

"And neither does this hoodlum, come to look him over," admitted Sergeant Campbell, fingering the lump on his head. "I say, is this the mon who wrecked your place, Muster MacTavish?"

"Who, him? Lord, no, sir!" declared the publican, glancing at Mr. Glencannon. "The man who smoshed my little snoogery was no' i' the least lik' yon besotted jockoss.... What do ye say, Cameron?"

"I say the same," declared Mr. Cameron. "The Glesga Smosher— the real Smosher, I mean— is a mon of aboot my ain height, and—"

From the corridor came sounds of scuffling.

"I am the spirit of Carry Nation!" a voice was shouting. "I am Volstead! I am Vengeance! Woe, woe, woe, ye sinners! To hell with alcohol!"

Four policemen dragged into the room a disheveled, wild-eyed prisoner who stood breathing through distended nostrils and muttering to himself.

"Foosh!" gasped Mr. Glencannon. "'Tis the Yonkee bruiser, Radway, fra' off the Inchcliffe Castle!"

"That's him— that's him!" cried the publicans. "Noo ye've got yere mon, inspector!"

"Put him in a cell," ordered Inspector MacNab. "He looks dangerous."

"Weel," said Mr. Glencannon blandly, easing his way toward the door, "I'm sorra that I canna' be o' further sairvice to ye, Inspector MacNab, sae I'll just bid ye a vurra guid evening."

"It was charming of you to drop in, Mr. Glencannon," replied Inspector MacNab cordially. "I really must insist that you spend the night with us. Lock him up, Campbell— drunk and disorderly!"

Sometime in the early hours of the morning Mr. Glencannon was awakened by a voice from the darkness of the adjoining cell.

"Hey, chief, are you awake?"

"Aye," said Mr. Glencannon. "Noo that ye've awakened me, I'm awake. Ye sound to me lik' the Yonkee Radway."

"Well, I am," came the voice. "Say, chief, do you happen to have a flask of tanglefoot on you? Boy, what I could do to a shot o' hootch right about now!"

"Hootch!" exclaimed Mr. Glencannon. "You, Radway, a teemperance fanotic and teetotaler, theersting for alcohol! Guid losh, what's the world coming to!"

"Shucks!" snorted Radway. "That temperance gag didn't fool you, too, did it? Why, say, under different names, I've smashed up saloons in Sydney, Vancouver, Cardiff, Londonderry and wherever them International League of Lunatics will pay the five pounds reward."

"Ye have?" said Mr. Glencannon. "Weel, weel, weel! And do they always get ye oot and pay ye?"

"Sure! They're a pretty powerful outfit. Why, I'll bet you that by midnight tomorrow I'll be coming back aboard the ship with two hunnerd 'n' seventy-five smackers in my pocket!"

"Ah," murmured Mr. Glencannon to himself, and in the darkness his brows were wrinkled ominously. "And when ye're coming through the shadows i' the yards, ye Yonkee swundler, the new theerd engineer and I will just retrieve for the Clan Glencannon those fufty-five hard-airned poonds!"

_____________________

2: The Dancer in the Crystal

Francis Flagg

(George Henry Weiss, 1898-1946)

Weird Tales Dec 1929

THEY WHO LIVED during that terrible time will never forget it— twenty-five years ago, when the lights went out.

It was in 1956.

All over the world, in the same hour, and practically at the same minute, electrical machinery ceased to function.

The youth of today can hardly realize what a terrible disaster that was for the people of the middle Twentieth Century. England and America, as well as the major nations of Europe, had just finished electrifying their railroads and scrapping the ponderous steam engines which did duty on some lines up until as late as the summer of 1954. A practical method of harnessing the tides and using their energy to develop electricity, coupled with the building of dams and the generating of cheap power through the labor of rushing rivers and giant waterfalls, and the invention of a device for broadcasting it by wireless as cheaply as it was generated, had hastened this electrification. The perfection of a new vacuum tube by the General Electric Company at Schenectady, in the United States, had made gas economically undesirable. The new method, by which it was possible to relay heat for all purposes at one-third the cost of illuminating gas, swept the various gas companies into oblivion. Even the steamers which plied the seven seas, and the giant planes that soared the air, received the power that turned their propellers, warmed their cabins and cooked their foods, in much the same fashion as did the factories, the railroads, and the private homes and the hotels ashore. Therefore when electricity ceased to drive the machines, the world stopped. Telegraph, telephone, and wireless communication ceased. Country was cut off from country, city from city, and neighborhood from neighborhood. Automobiles broke down; streetcars and electric trains refused to run; powerhouses were put out of commission; and at night, save for the flickering light of what lanterns, candles, and oil lamps could be resurrected, cities, towns, and hamlets were smothered in darkness.

I have before me the records of that time. It was ten and eleven o'clock in London, Paris, Berlin, and other continental cities when it happened. Restaurants, theaters, hospitals and private homes were plunged into darkness. Mighty thoroughfares that a moment before had glittered and glowed with thousands of lights and wheeling signs became gloomy canyons where people at first paused, questioned, and later plunged through in terrified clamor. Various men who later wrote their impressions for newspapers and magazines say that the thing which shook their nerves the most was the sudden silence which prevailed when all traffic ceased— that, and five minutes later the maddened cries and groans and curses of men and women fighting like wild beasts to escape from crowded restaurants and theaters.

People coursed through the streets shouting to one another that the power-houses had been blown up, that an earthquake had shaken them down. The most absurd statements were made, tossed from mouth to mouth, and added to the general bewilderment and panic. On the street corners religious fanatics suddenly sprang up, proclaiming that the end of the world had come, and that the sinners had better repent of their sins before it was too late. In the hospitals, nurses and doctors found themselves working under a frightful handicap. Gruesome tales are told of doctors caught in the midst of emergency operations. Because of the darkness it was impossible properly to attend the sick. Whenever available, candles, oil lamps and lanterns were pressed into service; but there were pitifully few of these to be had, and nowhere to turn for more. Telephone wires were dead, and automobiles, cars and buses stalled. To add to the horror, fire broke out in various places. There was no way of ringing in an alarm about them, and the fire apparatus could not have responded if there had been. So the fires spread. And the people of those neighborhoods where the flames leapt to heaven, at last had light— the light of their burning homes.

And then in the midst of all this horror and tumult the denizens of the dark, festering spots of the city crept forth. They swarmed from the filthy alleys and from the dives of the professional criminal, furtive-eyed, predatory; and houses were robbed, men killed, and women assaulted. The police were powerless to act; their mobility was gone; burglar alarms did not warn; and the city lay like a giant Samson shorn of its strength.

So that night passed, not for one city alone, but for hundreds of cities!

ii

WHILE all this was happening in the old world, chaos gripped the new.

Across the Atlantic, in the eastern cities of the United States and Canada, and as far west as Montreal and Chicago, the wheels stopped going at that hour when the workers began to pour forth from the factories and shops, and when the late shopping crowds were thronging the trains and the subways. On the surface cars and on the streets there was, of course, no immediate alarm. Moving-picture and vaudeville houses opened wide their doors, raised the blinds on their windows, and evacuated their patrons in good order. But underground in the various tubes and subways it was a different matter. Hundreds of cars bearing thousands of passengers were stalled in stifling blackness. Guards labored heroically to still the rising hysteria and panic. For perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes— in some cases as long as half an hour— they managed to maintain a species of order. But the great pumps and fans that usually circulated fresh air through the tunnels were no longer functioning. When the foul air fogged the lungs, the passengers went mad. Sobbing and cursing and praying, they fought to escape from the cars, as at the same moment the people of Berlin, Paris and London were fighting to escape from restaurants and theaters. They smashed the windows of the coaches, and in wriggling through them impaled the flesh of their bodies, their hands and faces, on jagged slivers of glass. They trampled each other under foot and flowed in terrified mobs along the right of way, searching madly for exits. In New York alone ten thousand of them perished. They bled to death, were crushed, or died of heart-failure and suffocation.

Above ground, the streets and avenues were thronged with millions of human beings trying to get home on foot. For hours dense crowds of workers, shoppers and businessmen filled the highways and byways. Here again panic was caused by the crashing planes. In Montreal the Royal Dominion air liner, Edward VII, on route on a non-stop flight from Halifax to Vancouver with four hundred passengers, fell from a height of three thousand feet onto Windsor Station, killing her own passengers and crew, and blotting out the lives of hundreds of people who were in the station at the time. In New York, Boston and Chicago, where the then new magnetic runabouts were making their initial appearance, hundreds of airplanes plunged to the ground, killing and maiming not only their passengers, but the men, women and children on whom they fell. "It was," states an eye-witness in a book he later wrote, called The Great Debacle, "a sight fit to appal the stoutest heart. Subway exits were disgorging ghastly mobs of clawing people; a crashing plane had turned a nearby street into a shambles; crowds ran this way and that, shrieking, praying. Everywhere was panic."

Panic indeed! Yet the records show that what they could do, the police and fire departments did. Mounted policemen were utilized to carry candles and oil lamps to hospitals, to scour the countryside for every available horse, and to ride through the city in an effort to calm the people. Firemen were marched to various points of vantage with axes and chemical containers, to combat any fire that might break out. But in the aggregate these precautions amounted to nothing. Whole hospitals passed the night in darkness; patients died by the hundreds; the flames of myriad fires lit up the sky; and rumors ran from mouth to mouth adding to the terror and chaos.

America, screamed the mobs, was being attacked by a foreign power. The power-houses had been rendered useless by a powerful magnet. There had been a terrible storm down south; all South America was sinking; North America would go next. No one knew anything; everyone knew something. Nothing was too wild or absurd for millions to believe. Deprived of their accustomed sources of information, the inhabitants became a prey to their own fancies and the disordered fancies of others. Religious fanatics by the light of huge bonfires preached the second coming of Christ and the destruction of the world. Thousands of hysterical people prostrated themselves on the hard street pavements, babbling, weeping, praying. Thousands of others looted wine and strong drinks from the cellars of hotels and cafés and reeled drunken through the streets, adding to the din and the panic. Nor did daylight bring much relief. For some obscure reason, all over Europe, Asia, and America, during the hours of daylight, the sky was strangely dulled. Seemingly the sun shone with all its usual splendor, but the air was perceptibly darkened. Why this should be so not even the scientists could tell. Yet even under the light of what millions of people on earth believed to be their last day, human wolves came out of their dens and prowled through the cities, sacking stores and private homes, blowing open safes, and killing and robbing with impunity. The day that succeeded the night was more horrible than the night that preceded the day, because hundreds of thousands of people who had slept through the hours of darkness awoke and joined their fellows on the streets, and because there is something terrible about a big city in which no cars run and no factory whistles blow, in which the machine has died.

And while the cities and the inhabitants thereof were given over to madness and destruction, tragedy took its toll of the skies and stalked the seas. The aircraft of the world were virtually wiped out. Only those escaped which were at rest in their hangars, or which by some miracle of navigation glided safely to earth. Hardly a year passes now but that on some wild mountain peak, or in a gloomy canyon or the heart of the Sahara, fragments of those airships are found. Nor did ocean-going vessels suffer less. In the space of twenty hours, two thousand ships of all classes and tonnage met with disaster— disaster that ultimately wiped out the great firm of Lloyds, in London, and a host of lesser insurance companies. Fifteen hundred steamers vanished, never to be heard of more, thirty-five of these being giant passenger boats carrying upward of twenty thousand passengers. Of the other five hundred ships, some were dashed to pieces on inhospitable coasts, others drifted ashore and broke up, and the remainder were abandoned at sea. The fate of the missing steamers may be partly inferred from what happened to the Olympia and the Oranta. This is taken from the account of the second officer of the former ship:

"The night was clear and starry, a heavy sea running. We were forging full speed ahead about two hundred miles off the Irish coast. Because of our electrically controlled gyroscope, however, the ship was as steady as a rock. A dance was being given in both the first and second class ballrooms, the music for them being supplied by the Metropolitan dance orchestra of London. In the third class theater a television moving-picture was being shown. Couples were walking or sitting on the promenade decks as, though a stiff breeze was blowing, the night was warm. From the bridge I could see the Orania coming toward us. She made a wonderful sight, her portholes gleaming tier on tier, and her deck lights glowing and winking, for all the world looking like a giant glowworm or a fabulous trireme. Doubtless, to watchers on her bridge and decks, we presented the same glorious sight, because we were sister ships, belonging to the same line, and of the same build and tonnage. All the time she was coming up I conversed with the first officer on her bridge by means of our wireless phone; and it was while in the midst of this conversation, and while we were still a mile apart and he was preparing (so he said) to have the wheel put over so as to take the Orania to starboard of us that, without warning, her lights went out.

"Hardly crediting my eyes, I stared at the spot where a moment before she had been. 'What is the matter with you?' I called through my phone, but there was no answer; and even as I realized that the phone had gone dead, I was overcome with the knowledge that my own ship was plunged in darkness. The decks beneath me were black. I could hear the voices of passengers calling out, some in jest and others in rising alarm, questioning what had happened. 'I can't get the engine room; the ship doesn't answer her helm.' I said, facing the captain, who had clambered to the bridge. 'Quick, Mr. Crowley!' he cried. 'Down with you and turn out the crew. Put men at every cabin door and stairway and keep the passengers off the decks.' His voice thundered into the microphone, which repeated his words through loud-speaking devices in every saloon, cabin, and on every deck of the ship— or should have so repeated them if the instruments had been functioning. 'There is no need for alarm. A little trouble to the engines, and incidentally to the dynamos, has caused the lights to go out. I beg of you to be calm. In a half-hour everything will be fixed,' But even as I rushed to obey his orders, even as his crisp voice rang out on the night-air, I saw the enormous dark bulk bearing down on us, and the heart leapt in my throat. It was the Orania, helpless, without guidance, as were we ourselves, rushing ahead under the momentum acquired by her now stilled engines.

"She struck us, bow on, to one side, shearing through steel plates as if they were so much cheese. At that terrific impact, in the dark and the gloom, all order and discipline were swept away. Something had happened to the gyroscopes, and the ships were pitching and tossing, grinding and crashing against each other, our own ship settling by the head, the stern rising.

"Then ensued a terrible time. The night became hideous with the clamor of terrified voices. Maddened passengers fought their ways to the decks, and to the boats. Crowded boats went down into the surging waves bow on or stern first, spilling their human freight into the sea. Hundreds of passengers, believing that the steamers would at any moment sink, leapt overboard with life-preservers, and in nearly all cases were drowned. All this in the first thirty minutes. After that the panic ebbed; it turned into dull despair. The crews of both steamers, what could be rallied of them, began to control the situation.

"Morning found the Orania practically intact, only making water in her No. 1 compartment. The Olympia forward compartments were all flooded, taking her down at the head, but the rear eight still held intact, and as long as they did so she could not sink. If the passengers had, from the beginning, remained calm and tractable, hardly a life need have been lost."

The second officer of the Olympia goes on to point out that both the giant liners had been thoroughly equipped with the most modern of electromechanical devices for use in emergencies; that they carried twin power-receiving engines; that they were electrically steered; and that from the pilot-house and the bridge communication could be had and orders and instructions given, to crew and passengers in every part of the ships. It was, he points out, the sudden and startling going out of the lights, and the totally unexpected breakdown of all machinery, which precipitated the tragedy, and not any negligence on the part of the officers and the crews.

Such is the story of one marine disaster; but the records are full of similar accounts, hundreds of them, which it is needless to set down here.

iii

ON THE Pacific coast, especially in the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, better order was maintained than in the big cities of the Middle West and the East. Panic there was loss of life and damage to property both from fire and theft, but not on so colossal a scale. This was due to the fact that the authorities had several hours of daylight in which to prepare for darkness, and because in the two cities mentioned there were no subways to speak of. In the downtown districts clerks and businessmen were advised to stick to their offices and stores. Policemen, mounted and afoot, were sent to the residential districts and to the factories. Instead of allowing the workers to scatter, they formed them into groups of twenty, deputized, armed, and as nearly as possible set to patrolling the streets of the neighborhoods in which they lived. These prompt measures did much to avert the worst features of the horrors which swept New York and Chicago and the cities of Europe and Asia. But in spite of them the hospitals knew untold suffering, whole city blocks were destroyed by flames, religious frenzy ran high, and millions of people passed the hours of darkness in fear and trembling.

I was twenty-two at that time, living in Altadena, which is a suburb of Pasadena, about twenty miles from Los Angeles, and trying to write. That morning I had taken a book and a lunch and climbed up the Old Pole Road to the top of Mount Echo, intending to return by the cable car which for years has operated from the purple depths of Rubio Canyon to the towering peak. I reached the top of the mountain after a steep climb, ate my lunch on the site of the old Lowe Observatory, and then became absorbed in my book.

The first inkling I had that something was wrong was when the light darkened. "It's clouding over," I thought, looking up, but the sky overhead was perfectly clear, the sun particularly bright.

Not a little disturbed in mind, and thinking, I must admit, of earthquakes, I strolled over to where a group of Mexican section workers, under the supervision of a white boss, had been doing some track repairing. The Mexicans were gesticulating and pointing to the cities and the countryside rolling away far beneath us. Now usually on a clear, sunny day there is a haze in the valley and one can not see for very many miles in any direction. But on this day there was an unwonted clarity in the air. Everything on which we gazed was sharply etched—no blurring, no fogging of lines. The houses stood out starkly; so did the spires of churches and the domes of public buildings. Though it was miles away to the westward, the mighty tower of the Los Angeles City Hall could be plainly seen. The light had darkened, yes; but the effect was that of gazing through slightly tinted glasses.

"What do you think it means?" I asked the track boss. But before he could make a reply, a Mexican cried out volubly, pointing one shaking hand up the steep ridge which rose behind us and crossing himself rapidly with the other.

It was an awe-inspiring sight on which we gazed. Over Mount Lowe a luminous, dancing light was growing. I did not know it then, but as far east as Denver and Omaha, and as far south as St. Louis and Galveston, men saw that light. Seen from the western cities of Calgary and Edmonton in Canada it was a pillar of blue flame growing out of the earth and, as the hours passed, mounting higher and higher into the heavens. Millions of eyes from all over the United States and the Dominion fearfully and superstitiously turned toward that glow. As night deepened upon the Pacific coast, the inhabitants of Southern California saw the sky to the north of them cloven asunder by a leaping sword. No wonder millions of people thought that the heavens had opened and Christ was coming.

But before night I had descended the steep slope of Mount Echo and walked the trackway into Altadena. Women and men called to me from doorways and wanted to know if there was a forest fire farther back in the hills. I could give them no answer. On Lake Avenue I saw the automobiles, street-cars, and motor-busses stranded.

"What is the matter?" I asked a conductor.

"I don't know," he said. "There isn't any power. They say all the power plants and machinery have stopped. A man rode through from downtown a few minutes ago and told us so."

I walked on into Pasadena. Everything was tied up. The streets were jammed with cars and people. Owing to the state ordinance which made it a penal offense for planes to fly over any California city—the air routes were so arranged, and the landing-stations and fields outside the cities, access to them being had by fast electric trains— the horror of airships falling on crowed city streets and on residences was entirely averted. People spoke, however, of having seen a huge air liner and some smaller pleasure planes plunging to earth to the west of them, turning over and over; and afterward I learned that the New York-Los Angeles special, which had just taken the air, had crashed into an orchard with a terrible loss of life.

I went no farther than Madison Street on Colorado Boulevard and turned back. It was ominous to look from the windows and porches of the big house that night and see the city black and formless beneath us. Usually the horizon to the west and south was illuminated for thirty miles around. Now, save for the dull glare of several fires, the darkness was unbroken.

Everything that happened that night is printed indelibly on my memory. Far off, like the sound of surf beating on a rocky shore, we could hear the voice of the mob. It rose and fell, rose and fell. And once we heard the crackle of what we took to be machine-gun fire. In the Flintridge district, I heard later, houses were sacked and looted. Some men defending their homes were murdered and several women badly treated. But in Altadena, up in the foothills, no one suffered any violence. Only once were we alarmed by a procession marching up Lake Avenue, bearing torches and chanting hymns. It was a body of religious fanatics, Holy Rollers, men, women, and children, on their way-to Mount Wilson, the better to wait the advent of Jesus, We could hear them shouting and singing, and in the flickering light of the torches, see them frothing at the mouth. They went by, and after that, save for a patrol from the sheriff's office, we saw no one until morning.

Dawn came, but if anything the tension and terror grew greater. All night the threatening scimitar of light over the mountains had grown taller and taller—one could see it literally growing— and the sinister brightness of it radiated like molten steel, nor did the coming of daylight dim its radiance.

None of us had slept during the night; none of us had thought of sleep. Haggard-faced we greeted the dawn, and with despair in our hearts realized that the light of day was perceptibly dimmer than it had been the day before. Could this actually be the end of the world? Were those poor fanatics who had gone by in the night right, and were the heavens opening, as they said? These, and more, were the thoughts that ran through my mind. Then— came the end!

It was 6 p. m. in London, 1 p. m. in New York, and 10 a. m. on the coast when it happened. Millions of people saw the pillar of light waver. For one pregnant moment it grew red-hot, with the crimson redness of heated iron. From its lofty summit, jagged forks of lightning leapt across the heavens and blinded the sight of those that watched. Then it vanished, was gone; and a few minutes after its going the street lights came on, the day brightened, telephone bells rang, wheels turned, and the twenty or so hours of terror and anarchy were ended!

iv

WHAT had been the cause of it all? No one knew. Learned men puzzled their heads over the problem. Scientists were baffled for an adequate answer. Many explanations were advanced, of course, but none of them held water. For a while there was a tendency on the part of various governments to suspect one another of having invented and utilized a fiendish machine for the undoing of rival nations. However, this suspicion was speedily dropped when it was realized how world-wide had been the nature of the disaster. Dr. LeMont of the Paris Astronomical League advanced the theory that the spots on the sun had something to do with the phenomenon; Doolittle of the Royal Academy of Science in London was of the opinion that the Cosmic Ray discovered by Millikan in 1928 was responsible; while others not so highly placed in the world of science as these two outstanding celebrities suggested anything from a dark comet, a falling meteor, to disturbances in the magnetic centers of the earth. The Encyclopedia Britannica, twenty-one years after the disaster which nearly wrecked civilization and perhaps the world, quotes the above theories in detail, and many more besides, but winds up with the assertion that nothing authentic as to the cause of the tragedy of 1956 has ever been forthcoming. This assertion is not true. In the fall of 1963 there was placed before the Royal Academy of Science in Canada evidence as to the origin of the great catastrophe sufficient to call forth an extended investigation on the part of that body.

Though eighteen years have passed since then, the results of that investigation have never been made public. I will not speculate as to the reason for that. In the interim a report was made of the matter to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, to the Royal Academy of Science in London, and to the Paris Astronomical League in France— a report which these learned bodies chose to ignore. And what was the evidence the Royal Academy of Science in Canada investigated?

As I have already stated, I was in California in 1956 and lived through one phase of the great disaster. Three years later— in the summer of 1959— having broken into the pages of some of the better class magazines with my stories, I made a trip to western Canada for the purpose of writing a series of stories for a western journal. It was there, miles from any city and in the foothills of the Rockies, that I met and listened to the story of the dying recluse. He was a young man, I judged, not a whit older than myself, but in the last stages of consumption.

I came upon the ranch-house— a four-room cabin made of split logs and undressed stone— after a hard day's ride. I pitched my tent on the banks of a tumbling mountain stream about a quarter of a mile from the house, and gladly accepted the invitation of the comely young mistress of the place to take dinner with them that evening. She was, I gleaned, the sick man's sister. Her husband, now absent rounding up cattle, was proving up on an adjoining quarter section, having already done so on two others in his wife's and brother-in-law's names.

After dinner I sat on the wide veranda with the sick man, whose sleeping-porch I surmised it was, talking with him and smoking my pipe.

"Visitors are rare out this way," he said, "and an educated man a godsend."

I was surprised to find him a man of no little education himself.

"You went to college?" I hazarded.

"Yes, McGill. I took my B. A. And after that, two years of medicine."

Over the plains the sun had sunk in red splendor below the horizon and the sky was on fire with its reflected glory. Nearer in I saw a ragged black splotch on the billowing earth, burnt-looking, charred.

"A prairie fire," I not so much questioned as stated.

The invalid, propped up on his couch, followed my finger with his cavernous black eyes.

"No," he said. "No. That is where it— was."

"It?" I queried.

"Yes," he replied; what the papers called the pillar of fire."

Then I remembered, of course. The burnt splotch was the place where the terrible luminous glow, the cleaving sword I had seen over Mount Lowe, had had its source. I stared, fascinated.

"Nothing," said the man on the couch, "will grow there— since then. The soil has no life in it— no life. It is," he said faintly, "like ashes— black ashes."

Silence fell between us for many minutes. The shadows lengthened and the twilight deepened. It was mournful sitting there in the growing gloom, and I felt relieved when the woman turned on the light in the sitting-room and its cheerful rays flooded through the open windows and the doorway. Finally the invalid said:

"I was here at the time. My sister and her husband were absent on a visit to his folks in Calgary."

"It must have been a stupendous sight," I remarked for want of a better thing to say.

"It was hell," he said. "That's how I got this," tapping himself on the chest and bringing on a fit of coughing. "The air," he gasped; "it was hard on the lungs."

His sister came out and gave him some medicine from a black bottle.

"You mustn't talk so much, Peter; it isn't good for you," she admonished.

He waved an impatient hand, "Let be!" he said. "Let be! What difference does it make? In another day, another week—"

His voice trailed away and then picked up again on a new sentence.

"Oh, don't pity me! Don't waste your pity on the likes of me! If ever a wretch deserved his fate, I deserve mine. Three years now I've suffered the tortures of the damned. Not of flesh alone, but of mind. When I could still walk about, it wasn't so bad; but since I've been chained to this bed I've done nothing but think, think.... I think of the great disaster; of the hours of terror and despair known by millions of people. I think of the thousands and thousands of men, women and children trapped in subways and theaters, trampled to death, butchered, murdered. I visualize the hospitals full of the sick and the dying, the giant liners of the air and of the ocean crashing, colliding, going down into the sea; and I seem to hear the screams and the pitiful prayers for help of the maddened passengers. Tell me, what fate should befall the fiend who would loose such woe and misery on an unsuspecting world?"

"There, there," I said soothingly, thinking him delirious, judging his mind unhinged from too much morbid brooding. "It was frightful, of course, but no one could help what happened— no one."

But my words did not calm him. On the contrary they added to his excitement. "That isn't true," he gasped. "It isn't true. No, no, sister, I won't be still, I'm not raving! Give me a drop of brandy— so; and bring me the little cedar box from the cupboard over there."

She complied with his request.

"It's all written down and put away in here," he said, tapping the box. "Put away in here, along with the third crystal which came home in the saddle-bag of John's runaway horse."

His eyes were like two black coals fastened on my face.

"I've told no one," he said tensely "but I can't keep silent any longer. I must speak! I must!"

One of his feverish hands gripped my own. "Don't you understand?" he cried. "I'm the fiend who caused the great world disaster. God help me! I, and one other!

"No, no he said, correctly reading the look on my face, "I'm not crazy, I'm not raving. It is God's truth I'm telling you, and the evidence of it is in this cedar box. It began in Montreal when I was going to McGill University. The under-professor of physics there was a young French-Canadian by the name of John Cabot. He—"

A fit of coughing stopped his voice. His sister gave him a sip of water.

"Peter," she pleaded, "let it go for tonight. Tomorrow—"

But he shook his head. "I may be dead tomorrow. Let me talk now." His eyes sought mine. "Did you ever hear about the meteorite that fell back in Manitoba in 1954?"

"No."

"Nor about the seven crystals that were found in it?"

"I don't remember."

"Well, they were found," he said; "seven of them as large as grapefruit. There's nothing remarkable about finding crystals in a meteorite. That has been done before and since. But those seven crystals were not ordinary ones. They were perfectly rounded and polished, as if by hand. Nor was that all: at the core of each of them was a vibrant fluid, and in that fluid was a black spot—"

A spasm of coughing choked his utterance, and this time I joined with his sister in urging him to rest, but desisted when I saw that such advice, and any effort on my part to withdraw, only succeeded in adding to his painful excitement.

"A black spot," he gasped, "that danced and whirled and was never still. Don't try to stop me! I must tell you about it! The scientists of the world were all agog over them. Where, they asked, had the meteor come from, and what were the fluid and the spot at the center of each crystal? In the course of time the crystals were sent various places for observation and study. One went to England, another to France, two to Washington, while the remaining three stayed in Canada, finally coming to rest in the Museum of Natural Science in Montreal which is now under the jurisdiction of McGill University.

"It was during my first year at medical school that I entered the museum one afternoon, almost by accident. The sight of the crystals, newly exhibited, fascinated me. I could hardly tear myself away in time for a lecture.

"The next afternoon I came again. I watched the black spots dancing in their vibrant fluid. Sometimes they would whirl in the center of the liquid with monotonous regularity. Then suddenly they would dash at the walls which held them in and circle them with inconceivable speed. Was it my imagination, or did the specks take on shape or form? Were they prisoners forever beating their heads against the bars of a cell, seeking to be free? Engrossed in such thoughts I did not know that another had entered the museum until a voice addressed me.

" 'So you have come under their spell, too, Ross.'

"I looked up with a start and recognized John Cabot. We knew each other, of course, Because I had studied under him for two years.

" 'They look so life-like, sir,' I replied. 'Haven't you noticed it?'

" 'Perhaps,' he said quietly, 'they are life.'

"The thought stirred my imagination.

" 'You know,' he went on, 'that there are scientists who claim life originally came to the earth from some other star, perhaps from outside the universe entirely. Maybe,' he said, 'it came, even as these crystals came, in a meteor.' "

The sick man paused and moistened his lips with water.

"That," he said, "was the beginning of the intimacy which sprang up between John Cabot and me. It was often possible for Cabot to take one of the crystals to his room, and then we would foregather there and ponder the mystery of it, Cabot was a sound teacher of physics, but he was more than that. He was a scientist who was also a speculative philosopher, which meant being something of a mystic. Have you ever studied mysticism? No? Then I can't tell you about that. Only from him and his speculations I struck fire. How can I describe it? Perhaps gazing in the crystal hypnotized us both. I don't know as to that. Only night and day both of us became eaten with an overwhelming curiosity.

" 'What do the scientists say is inside the crystals?' I asked Cabot.

" 'They don't say,' he replied. 'They don't know. A message from Mars perhaps, or from beyond the Milky Way.'

"From beyond the Milky Way," whispered the sick man. "Can't you see what that would mean to our imaginations?"

He beat the quilt that covered him with his hand.

"It meant," he said, "the forbidden. We dreamed of doing what the scientists of America and Europe said they hesitated to do for fear of the consequences— or for fear of destroying objects valuable to science. We dreamed of breaking the crystal!"

A big moth fluttered into the radius of light and the dying man followed it with his eyes. "That's what we were, Cabot and I, though we didn't know it: moths, trying to reach a searing flame."

By this time I was engrossed in his story. "What then?" I prompted.

"We stole the crystals! Perhaps you read about it at the time?"

I shook my head.

"Well, it was in all the papers."

Í explained that in those days I had seldom seen a paper from one week's end to another. He nodded feebly.

"That accounts for it, then. The theft caused a sensation in university circles, and both Cabot and I were thoroughly questioned and searched. But we had been too clever!" The sick man laughed mirthlessly. "God help us! too clever! What wouldn't I give now," cried Peter Ross bitterly, "if we had been discovered! But a malignant fate ordered otherwise. We were successful. During the holidays I took the crystal home with me, home, to these hills and plains. Later Cabot joined me."

He broke off for a moment as if exhausted.

"I wonder," he said, after a few minutes, "if I can make what we felt and thought clear to you. It wasn't just idle curiosity that was driving us. No! It was more than that. Out of the unknown itself had come a meteor with a message for mankind. Something stupendous was hidden in the cores of those crystals. Yet what had the scientists of the world done? They had contented themselves with weighing the crystals, looking at them under a microscope, photographing them, writing learned articles about them, and then putting them away on museum shelves! None of them— not one; or so it seemed to us— had had the courage to open a crystal. Their reasons— deadly germs, virulent forms of life, terrific explosions— we dismissed as cowardly vaporings. The time had come, we said, to investigate more thoroughly. God help us," whispered Peter Ross, "we blinded ourselves to what might be the consequences of our rash experiment! We eased our consciences with the reflection that we were safeguarding humanity from any danger by carrying it out in the wilderness, miles from any city or human habitation. If there were to be any martyrs, we thought egotistically, it would be us alone. We had, of course, no inkling of the terrible force we were about to loose.

"Early in the morning of the day of the disaster we rode from this place down there to the plains, down to where you saw that charred splotch. We had with us a portable outfit of chemical instruments. It was our intention to smash one of the crystals, catch the fluid in our test-tubes, isolate the black spot, and make an analysis of it and the liquid later. But we never did," he said; "we never did."

A cough rattled in his throat.

"It was Cabot who broke the crystal. Before noon, it was, but I'm not sure of the time. He knew how to do it; he had all the tools necessary. The crystal lay inside a metal container. I tell you there was something uncanny about it glimmering in the sun! The black spot was whirling madly, dashing itself with violence against the restraining walls as if it sensed that freedom was near.

" 'Look at him,' said Cabot tensely. 'Look at him leaping and kicking. What a dancer! What a—  in a minute now and he'll be out of that!"

"Perhaps it was the phrase; perhaps it was the masculine pronoun used in connection with the black spot; but suddenly I was afraid of the thing we would do. Fearful possibilities ran through my mind.

" 'John,' I cried, stepping back several paces, 'John, don't!'

"But Cabot never heard me. His hand went up with the heavy hammer.

"Poor John! Nothing warned him—nothing stayed him!

"The blow came down. I heard the tinkling crash; then—

" 'Oh my God!'

"It was Cabot's voice in a shrill scream of unutterable horror and agony. His bent figure straightened up, and from his hair and his outflung arms blue lights crackled and streamed, and all around his body a column of something shimmered and shifted and grew. So for a moment he postured; then he began to dance. I tell you he began to dance, not by any force or power that resided in his own limbs, but as if he were jerked or writhed about by an external agent. I saw what that agent was. It was the black spot! Out of the ground it rose like an evil jinnee and took on the form and shape of something monstrous, inhuman, horrible. It leapt and whirled; and yes, though I couldn't hear it, it sang and shouted. It was the nucleus of an increasing body of light. I felt searing heat scorch my cheeks and burn my throat with every breath I drew. More! I felt that streaming fingers of light were reaching out at me, clutching.

"With a sob of fear I turned and ran. Cabot's horse had broken loose and was running wildly across the plains. My own was plunging madly at the end of its picket rope. Somehow I mounted and fled, but after several miles of such flight my horse put its hoof in a prairie-dog hole and broke its leg, pitching me over its head.

"How long I lay dead to the world I don't know; but the long shadows were running eastward when I came to. The air was acrid and bitter. With fearful eyes I saw that the day was unaccountably dark and that the pillar of fire out on the plains had grown to immense proportions. Even as I gazed on it, it grew. Hour after hour it grew, adding to its circumference and height. From the four corners of the horizon, in mighty arches that dipped to a common center, flowed infinitesimal particles of what seemed golden dust. I know now that all the electricity was being sucked out of the air, darkening the day, blackening the night, and rendering all machinery useless. But then I knew only that the pillar of fire, the center to which those particles cohered, was drawing nearer and nearer to where I lay. For I could barely move, my feet seemed like lead, and there was a tight band round my chest.

"Perhaps I was delirious, out of my head; I do not know, but I got on my feet and walked and walked, and when I couldn't walk I crawled. Hours and hours I crawled, driven ahead by a growing horror of the nightmare that pursued me; yet when I stopped, exhausted, I was still far away from the foothills and the pillar of fire was nearer than ever. I could see the monstrous black thing inside of it dancing and whirling. My God! It was reaching out dark streamers of fire after me; it was calling out that it wanted me, that it would have me, that nothing this side of heaven or hell could keep it from me; and as it shot this implacable message into my senses, it grew bigger, it danced faster, and it came closer.

"Again I staggered to my feet and ran. Late night found me several miles below here, quenching my thirst at a spring of water which trickles from the side of a rock. I looked back, and the pillar of fire was now so high that it lost itself in the heavens. All around me played a livid light, a light that flung the shape of a gigantic dancing horror this way and that. Did I tell you that this light was like a pillar? Yes, it was like a pillar whose middle swelled out in a great arc; and I knew that I was doomed, that I could not escape, and swooning horror overcame me and I fell to the ground and buried my face in my hands.

"Hours passed— or was it only minutes? I cannot say. I could feel my body writhing, twisting. Every atom of my flesh was vibrating to an unnatural rhythm. I was crazy, yes, out of my head, delirious, but I swear to you that I heard John Cabot crying to me, imploring, 'For God's sake, break the crystal, break the crystal!' and I cried back into my huddled arms not speaking, yet screaming it, 'We broke the crystal! God help us! We broke the crystal!'

"Then suddenly it came to me that he meant the second crystal. Yes, yes, I understood. The fiendish thing out there on the plain was seeking, not me but its counterpart.

"The second crystal was in the knapsack still swung on my back. With insane fury I tore it out of its padded, protected housing and whirled it over my head. Filled with loathing of the terrible thing, I flung it from me as far as the strength of my arm would permit. Perhaps twenty yards away it crashed into a rock and was shattered to pieces. I saw the slivers of it glint and flash; then from the spot where it struck rose a column of light, and in the column of light was a whirling speck. Like its predecessor it grew and grew, and as it grew, receded from me in the direction of the mightier pillar whirling and calling. How can I tell you of the weird dance of the evil ones? They sang to each other, and I know the song they sang, but I cannot tell it to you because it was not sung in words.

"At what hour they came together, whether it was day or night, I do not know. Only I saw them merge. With their coming together the terrible power that was sucking in the world's electrical forces to one gigantic center became neutralized. The heavens split open as the bolts of lightning devastated the sky. Through the rent firmament I saw a black shape cleave its way. Whatever had been in the two crystals was leaving the earth, was plunging through the Milky Way, through the incalculable spaces beyond the reach of our most powerful telescopes, back back..."

TWO DAYS later, in a grave beside the tumbling mountain stream, his brother-in-law and I buried all that was mortal of Peter Ross. Over his resting-place we piled a great cairn of rocks so that the spring floods might not wash his body away nor coyotes worry the tomb of the dead. When I parted with the bereaved sister, she pressed me to accept the cedar box.

"Poor Peter!" she said. "Toward the last he ran a fever all the time and was delirious; but he wanted you to have the box, and so you must take it."

I saw that she attached no importance to his story.

"He never mentioned it before," she said; "he was out of his head."

And so I was inclined to believe until I examined the contents of the box. Then I changed my mind. If what he told us had been naught but the result of morbid brooding and delirium, then he must have been morbid and delirious for years preceding his death, because the written version of his story began simply, "It is nearly a year now since," and was a bare recital of facts, written plainly and in the manner of a man with no especial gift for expressing himself in words. Nor was that all. Besides the manuscript mentioned were revealed various letters which I perused, letters from Cabot to Ross, Ross to Cabot, covering a period of years and telling of their ideas and plans and of the theft of the crystals. The whole story, save for its denouement, could be pieced together from those letters.

Incredible as Peter Ross's tale had sounded in the telling, wild and incoherent though it had been, and colored with fever and delirium none the less it was true. And as if to rout whatever disbelief might be still lurking in my mind, I saw that which finally led me to place the whole matter before the Royal Academy of Science in Canada, and before various other scientific bodies, as I have recorded; and which in this latter day, so that mankind may be warned against the menace imprisoned in the crystals, has made me put everything down here: the crowning evidence of all. For in the bottom of the box was a round object; and when I picked it up, my fascinated eyes were held by a transparent bubble the size of an orange with a black spot at its core, dancing, dancing....

_________________

3: The Superman of Dr Jukes

Francis Flagg

Wonder Stories Nov 1931

1: Human Experiment

HE WAS slim and of medium height, with the phenomenon of cold gray eyes in a dark face and under a thatch of black hair. His father had been an Italian immigrant and his mother a descendant of “dark Irish,” those sons and daughters of old Spanish blood— the blood of the crew of the great Armada that Philip sent out in pride and pomp to subdue Elizabethan England, that Drake and Frobisher scattered, and that storms cast away on the inhospitable shores of Scotland, and on the rock coast of the Green Isle.

Chicago had bred him, and in the Windy City he was known as “Killer Mike." He did not look the killer, but in his case looks were deceiving. As a matter of fact, he was as deadly as a rattlesnake. but he struck only in the matter of business and never for the mere love of slaughter. Young, he was under thirty, and personable, with the smatterings of a fair education. It was only when the “Big Shot.” whose bodyguard he was, tried to put him on “the spot,” that he left Chicago hurriedly. The Big Shot held organized gangsterism in the hollow of his hand and to attempt. openly, to live and function without his permission and protection was suicidal.

So the Killer had fled, conscious that the long arm of his erstwhile chief "was reaching out to slay. East to Boston, and from Boston by steamer to Halifax. Here he breathed easily for a moment. But one night a shot stabbed at him through the dark so he staked aboard a train for Montreal. From Montreal he swung across the border to Detroit, and from Detroit zigzagged west to Arizona, losing himself in the vast armies of unemployed who rode freights. By this time his money was gone, his sleekness, and he wore frowsy overalls and a jumper. Lolling on the grass by the Fourth Street subway in Tucson, not knowing what moment he might be bagged by a policeman, an elderly gentleman with a large protruding nose accosted him.

“I suppose work is pretty hard to get these days," he remarked.

“Yes, said the killer. He was properly suspicious of all strangers, but a cursory inspection served to show that here was no likely henchman of the Big Shot. The elderly man was well-dressed in clothes of a good cut and quality, but carelessly, as if clothes were of little importance to him.

“It must be hell on those poor devils with wives and families to support.”

“I've no one but myself,” said the Killer.

“But you need employment. I presume?”

“In the worst way.”

THE elderly man studied him thoughtfully.

“My name,” he said at length, “is Jukes— Doctor Jukes. Ever hear of it?”

“No.”

“Ah, well,” said the Doctor, “it isn't quite unknown to science. I am by way of being a physicist of some reputation. My papers on—” he brought himself up with a jerk. “What I meant to say is that I am interested in certain experiments for which I need a human subject. Nothing dangerous, you understand—mostly a matter of routine. But still important.” He stroked his chin. “I’m willing to pay a young man like yourself forty dollars a week for a few weeks’ employment at the most. Food and lodging included. You would, of course, lead a secluded life under my supervision for the duration of the experiments. What do you say?”

The Killer thought swiftly. Here was an opportunity to drop from sight for some time to come, a sanctuary in which to rest up while recouping his pocket-book. The old boy was lying, of course— there must be some risk to the experiment— but not as much risk as dying of lead poisoning.

"All right,” he said briefly, “you’ve hired me.”

The Doctor smiled Benevolently. “And your name isꟷ"

“Brown." said the Killer without the least flicker of hesitation.

“Very well. Brown,” said the Doctor, “if you’ll  follow me to my car—”

But the Killer shook his head. It was not  likely that he was being observed, yet one never

“Just slip me your address,” he said. "I’ll be around later.”

Doctor Jukes’ residence was 1 out St. Mary’s  Road, in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains. Five acres of land were enclosed by a high fence of net-wire. Four buildings stood in this enclosure. The Doctor introduced the Killer to one of them, really a wing of the main residence, but only connected to it by a roofed passageway. This annex contained a suite of rooms which, if not luxurious—and the Killer was accustomed to a certain amount of luxury and refinement in his surroundings— were comfortably furnished.

There was a bedroom, bath and sitting-room, and a door led to a small patio or garden, some yards in extent, which was surrounded by a six-foot concrete wall.

“I believe you will find everything comfortable,” said the Doctor.

A man servant, middle-aged, taciturn, prepared a bath, laid out shaving gear, and provided fresh linen and a suit of white duck that fitted the guest fairly well. The Killer wondered from whence they came and, if he had known, might not have felt so easy in his mind.

As it was, he relaxed, and over a tastefully served meal studied his surroundings. Bars criss-crossed the high windows, he noticed, and when the servant finally went away by the passage door and left him to a magazine and a cigarette, the door automatically locked behind him.

But these trifles failed to disturb the Killer. Of course the Doctor could not be expected to give every stranger the run of his place. He congratulated himself on his luck in finding as secure a hiding place.

The next morning he was made rather ill by the injection of a solution into his arm.

“You’ll be all right tomorrow,” said the Doctor. But every day there was a new injection, and a week passed before he felt himself. Then he picked up surprisingly. It was a quiet existence. He walked or read in the little patio and sunned himself. Sometimes the Doctor’s assistant, a stout nervous individual of uncertain age named Doctor Burdo, walked with him, taking notes of his condition. He was an old school-mate of Doctor Jukes and devoted to his interests. All this he told the Killer in his pleasant inconsequential chatter.

“Doctor Jukes is a great man,” he said. “Famous, a genius.”

Day by day the Killer found himself tingling more and more with the zest of living. His wits seemed to clarify. He thought of a thousand ways in which he could have disposed of the Big Shot and wondered why they had never occurred to him before. Also his sight became keener, almost microscopic in its keenness, he thought, and laughed at the conceit. But nothing escaped his eyes. The little lizards darting up the wall, and the activities of certain small bugs and insects.

He spent hours watching them. His increasing ability to hear was almost uncanny—the creaking of the floor, the soughing of the wind, and a myriad of small things rubbing wings and crawling. He was not alarmed. He knew these phenomena were the results of the Doctor’s injections. The assistant quizzed him about them, made interminable notes.

One day in the garden he turned on him with a swift movement, a movement almost as swift and as lithe as that of a panther.

“Ah, but I feel strong,” said the Killer. He flexed his arms. “I feel as if I could lift you over my head like an Indian club.”

He caught the assistant playfully by the waist, and to his huge surprise—the assistant weighed nearly two hundred pounds— whirled him aloft like a feather. Once more on his feet, the assistant laughed shakily.

“I’ll say you’re strong.”

That evening the assistant spoke at length to Doctor Jukes. The Doctor nodded.

“The experiment has been a glorious success. There’s no need to carry it further. Give him the quietus in the morning.”

The assistant hesitated. “Such a splendid fellow. It seems a pity to—”

“Come, come, Charles,” laughed the Doctor. “No mawkish sentimentalism. Tomorrow,” he said more seriously, “I am to meet Asbury, so I must leave the giving of the quietus to you.”

THE KILLER was restless, his mind abnormally active. For the first time he resented being locked in at night. He gave one of the window-bars a tentative twist and it came away in his hand. With the sinuous grace of an animal he swung through the aperture and dropped to the ground beyond. It was cooler in the gardens than in his room. His nostrils quivered with delight. The night was intoxicatingly odorous, filled with murmurous sounds.

For awhile he paced back and forth, but soon it occurred to him that he had never seen beyond the confines of the walls hemming him in. On the other side was the laboratory, and the quarters of the assistant. Why not surprise Burdo with a call? He scaled the wall with ease. The laboratory door was latched but not locked. Unfortunately, however, the assistant had chosen that evening to dine out.

Filled with curiosity the Killer struck a match and turned on an electric light. It dimly revealed a long room almost meticulously neat. White porcelain sinks set against the wall, and stands and shelves with orderly rows of test-tubes and bottles containing chemical compounds or cultures.

Beyond was still another room, and when he opened its door something moaned and flashed by him with a screech. There was a crash behind him. Turning, he perceived that the creature, a monstrous pink rat, had taken refuge on a shelf over a sink, upsetting a number of bottles in doing so. At his approach it leaped from the shelf and fled through the outer door into the night. None of the bottles were broken. As nearly as possible, he rearranged them in their niches on the shelf, and somewhat ashamed of his misadventure, returned to his apartment and went to bed.

The bottles were similar in size, their contents colorless as water and indentifiable by the numbers over the niches in which they stood. A corresponding number was labeled on each bottle, but for the most part were small and almost illegible.

Still drowsy from the unaccustomed lack of sleep for it had been after midnight when he turned in, the assistant reached automatically and with hardly a glance, for a certain bottle. Unwittingly he filled his hypodermic with— not the lethal dose intended— but the pure, undiluted secretion, minute quantities of which the Doctor  had been injecting into his patient over a series of days. And it was this solution he shot into the Killer’s arm.

2: The Quietus

TWO men were seated in the uptown office of Joshua Jukes, famous surgeon and scientist. One was Doctor Jukes himself, slim, with well-spaced eyes and a towering balded brow. The other was not less a personage than Vincent Asbury, Secretary of War. In some circles it was more than hinted that he was Frazzini’s man. The Doctor either didn’t now this or didn't care. He was a scientist, not a politician. His own motives were clear enough. He had made known his discovery to the War Department, offered his formula for sale, and as for the rest—

Vincent Asbury was speaking. He was a handsome man of fifty, with narrow, crafty eyes, and when standing carried his tall figure with noticeable distinction.

“You mean to tell me, Doctor Jukes, that this thing is possible?”

“Indeed, yes.”

“But it sounds like a miracle.”

“And one not to broadcast to the world. First my country—”

“Oh, yes, your country.” Asbury carefully kept the smile from his face. “And if you can properly demonstrate your discovery, your country will reward you well. But how does it

“That’s rather difficult to make clear to the lay mind. But you know the glandular theory?”

“Slightly.”

“Well, it’s through the injection of extracts, of course. Certain ductless glands have a secretion lately analyzed which empties directly into the blood. This secretion is what keeps the nerves of the body normal and healthy. It has been ascertained that too little flow produces nervous depression, sciatica, rheumatism, while too much brings about that abnormal condition which is usually diagnosed as genius or insanity. Walters of England, and Swenson of Sweden, have made important discoveries in this field. Indeed their Fol-Fos extract is now being used to heal certain types of mental disorders. What I have told you so far is the secret of no particular scientist or country.”

“But this other?” asked Asbury anxiously.

“Is. You must know that I have devoted the last ten years of my life to the same research work engrossing Walters and Swenson. Curious things in relation to ductless glands early claimed my attention. Some of my findings I published in medical and scientific journals, but others I kept to myself. First, because I had not substantiated them with the proper amount of proof; second, because I did not wish to be anticipated in the thing I sought to discover.

“But I have produced rats as large as cats, mice as large as rats, and other things which I had better not mention. Dogs grown into nightmares, rabbits that a little lack of manganese rob of the ‘instinct’ of mother love, and even of the desire and ability to mate. But enough. You understand that I worked, that I spared nothing in my investigations. Not even,” said the scientist coolly, “men.”

“Good heavens!”

“What would you? Some of them died, of course, and others went mad and had to be killed. But one must verify certain conclusions on the human. There is no other way. They were poor devils— martyrs to science, if you will. At any rate, they made possible what I have finally achieved.”

Asbury made no audible retort, though he could not keep the distaste out of his face. Yet Doctor Jukes was right. The ethical value placed on human life is an uncertain thing. For reasons they knew nothing of, and that might not even concern them, he would send millions of soldiers to die and think little of it.

The scientist went on; “If one could handle the process which caused an increase in secretion in the ductless glands I have alluded to, would not that open the way to speeding up every function of the human body? That was, at first, a wild surmise on my part. But consider that man is a creature of his nerves. The sense perceptions, the reflex actions, even speed of thought itself, is dependent on the nervous system. The glands speed up the nerves, the nerves every sense and faculty of the human organism, including that of mind. And mind reacting back upon the nerves and glands again, keys up every sense and organ of the human

“This was the basis on which I worked. Failure after failure but increased my determination to succeed. Finally I met with some success in the case of animals. Then it was that I used, and am still using men. No need to relate the successes and failures there. Even the successes it was necessary to kill. I see you do not like that, but consider—could I allow my experiments to be bruited around? After years of work I was intoxicated with victory. See this bottle? Ten drops of its contents is enough to raise the normal powers of a healthy man ten times in excess of what he possesses. There is fol-fos in it, of course, and a portion of adrenalin, and— but that is my secret.”

The habitual calmness of the great scientist returned to him. He placed the bottle carefully back on the desk and regarded the Secretary of War.

“Well, my dear sir?” he questioned.

Vincent Asbury said slowly, “I am thinking,” and he was. He was visualizing a picked body of men with their physical powers raised to the zenith. What power could withstand them? His eyes narrowed. “If you can prove this secretion?”

“I can.”

“Then listen...”

Doctor Jukes came from his interview with Vincent Asbury with a feeling that everything was well in the best of all possible worlds. He did not like Asbury, but money was to be his for further scientific investigations, and just in the nick of time, since his other resources had well-nigh dwindled away. Blithely he entered his home.

“Well, Charles?”

The assistant glanced at the clock. “I gave him the quietus at nine-thirty and never saw a man pass out so suddenly. I left him lying on the bed until your return.”

The Doctor nodded. “I’ll take a look at him before lunch.”

He walked through the open passage. “A nice day,” he thought, ‘but hot.” Nothing warned him that he was making his last observation on the weather.

HOW STRONG the accelerating secretion injected mistakenly into the Killer’s arm was will never be known, but it must have been tremendous. Had his system not been accustomed gradually to increased doses over a period of days, the results would have been fatal. As it was, the sudden acceleration of heart and lung action brought him to the verge of death.

Darkness struck at the base of his skull with the suddenness of a sledgehammer and he collapsed into an inanimate heap. The assistant felt for his pulse, but the beat of it was so incredibly rapid as to register as no pulse at all. But the Killer was not dead, and during the hours he lay in a state of coma his whole bodily organization underwent a miraculous change. As suddenly as it had left him, consciousness returned and found him staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Giddy, he was, and sick, but this soon passed, and in the moment of its passing Doctor Jukes entered the room and knelt by his side. The first thing the Doctor found remarkable was the heat radiating from the supposedly dead body and the flexibility of the wrist he took.

“What the devil!” he cried, starting up. “Here, Charles! The lad isn't dead.” He stared at the wide glowing eyes. “You couldn’t have given the quietus; you must have—”

But he never finished the sentence. Like a flickering shadow the Killer’s hand shot out and took him by the throat. There was a sharp snap as the neck broke, and in the same instant the body hurtled the room to crash against the far wall. The Killer surged to his feet. He had heard the Doctor’s words, understood the situation and all that it implied.

“Kill me, would he, the dirty rat!” The motion of the Doctor’s body fascinated him. It seemed to loaf along at snail-like speed. In reality its transit through the air occupied not three seconds. But everything in time and space had altered for the Killer. The assistant running for the door seemed a figure shown on a screen by a slow motion-picture camera. The lifting of his feet, the bending of knees, in fact, every motion of flight, was almost painfully slow and measured. Each detail could be watched.

The Killer had seen pictures of animals running like that. Long-legged giraffes sailing gracefully over African landscapes— slender deer slowed up in their flight so that patrons in theaters might study their methods of locomotion. For a moment he was startled. Then working at lightning speed, his mind grasped the explanation.

For weeks they had been speeding up his bodily organization, and now, now—

He moved. It was done with such swiftness that one might be forgiven for comparing it with that atom or electron which is said to shift positions without any intermediate action. In midstride he caught the assistant. One brush of the hand. It was like pushing over a mannequin that refused to fall, save as a feather topples. Then bare-headed, and clad in but trousers and a soft-collared shirt, he was out of the building, the grounds, and striding up the road.

An automobile crawled towards him, a taxicab, doing twenty miles an hour. Now was the test, his own strength against that of the gleaming car. Deliberately he blocked its way. The driver screamed at the sudden materialization of this slender, dark-faced man. Almost wildly he bore down on the brakes, sought to swerve, but the yawing machine was brought to an abrupt stop that catapulted him over the wheel, that flung the white-faced man in the rear seat forward across his shoulders.

With one negligent hand the Killer held the taxi motionless while its engine roared under a shaking hood, while its wheels still bit impotently at the packed dirt of the road.

3: “Two Men Have Been Killed”

WHEN Doctor Jukes left Vincent Asbury, Asbury went to his apartments in the exclusive Green Hotel and dismissed his secretary and valet.

“I’ll not be needing you, Robbins,” he told the man-servant, “until dinner-time. You may have the afternoon off.” He was in Tucson incognito and, save for one or two discreet individuals, unknown.

Assured of privacy, he placed on a table a dark case that looked not unlike the container for a portable typewriter and raised the lid. The case certainly contained a machine but not of the typewriter variety.

At first glance it might have been mistaken for a radio. Indeed it was that, and something more. In fact the contrivance represented the last word in radio-television devices, the invention of a great inventor who had sold it for a price—five million dollars to be exact. The inner surface of the upraised lid was a burnished screen. Connecting the device to a light socket by means of an extension cord, Asbury threw a switch and twirled a dial.

Instantly the room was filled with a spttering noise. 302 M-9b, he spelt carefully. The sputtering fell, rose, died away. He leaned so that his face was fully caught by the light of a bluish bulb. The burnished screen clouded, clarified, and in it grew the features of a man.

“Hello,” said a voice faintly, as if from an immense distance.

"Hello yourself. This Number Two speaking. Yes, Number Two. Is the Big Shot there?”

“Sure,” said the faint voice. “He’s been waiting for your call. Just a moment.” The features faded, and in a minute was succeeded by those of a man whose face expressed ruthless power. The eyes were wide-set, with heavy lids, and even in this television picture, which gave no distinct colors, save white and black, you knew that they were greenish.

The cheeks were fleshy, the lips thick but well-shaped, and one cheek was scarred as if by an old burn. The newspapers of the world had broadcast that face. It had been shown in newsreels and magazines. A nationally known face it was, as familiar as that of the President of the United States, or of a movie star— the face of Frazzini, millionaire bootlegger, king of racketeers. It smiled genially now, showing a set of white even teeth.

“That you, Vincent?”

“Yes. I’m speaking from Tucson.”

“How is everything?”

“I saw Doctor Jukes about that discovery of his he offered the government—through me.” He laughed softly. “Of course he thinks he’s doing business with Uncle Sam.”

“And the discovery?”

“It’s a wonderful thing. Listen, Frazzini, a shot of it would make our boys irresistible.” He went into details. “The effect wears off in time, but while it lasts—”

“You made him an offer?”

"Of a million cash—with a hundred thousand yearly for further research work. He understands that the deal is secret—for reasons of State, ha, ha!”

Frazzini spoke incisively. “See the Doctor at once and tell him you will have a government official and two secret-service men call on him tomorrow for a practical demonstration. I shall leave here with Landy and Cococetti almost immediately. Reserve rooms for us at your hotel. Understand?”

“Yes. On the top floor, I suppose? Chicago is twelve hundred miles away as the crow flies. That means you will get in—”

“In twelve hours at the outside. Have everything arranged. Good-by.”

Thoughtfully Vincent Asbury removed the connections and closed the case. Lighting a cigarette he moved over and stared unseeingly out of the window. Frazzini could make him president of the United States— and would. But nevertheless he irked under the gang chieftain’s control. Given the opportunity, he would blot out Frazzini— like that. But right now he needed him, and the organization he controlled.

His mind busy with all its torturous thoughts, he called up the desk and asked that a taxi be summoned. At the same time he reserved the rooms. It was summer and not difficult to get the location desired. Descending, he took his seat in the taxi and giving Doctor Jukes’ address, sank back with closed eyes. Up Congress the car sped, then north, and then west again. Suddenly the car stopped with a jerk and he was hurled violently forward into the back of the driver. The shock nearly dislocated his neck.

“What the devil!” he cried when he had recovered his breath. “What does this mean?” and then paused with mouth half open, staring into a dark expressionless face and cold grey eyes!

Every atom was rioting in Killer Mike’s body. By almost imperceptible degrees the potent solution was increasing in intensity. There was no reckoning how fast the Killer’s faculties were functioning. He laughed sardonically, an eerie laugh.

“Ha, ha! If it isn't Number Two!” Even in that brief second of stopping the car, and while Asbury was yet engrossed in his own thoughts, the Killer heard him thinking. Yes, heard; for him it seemed that Vincent Asbury had been talking aloud. The Behaviorists claim that all reasoning is a matter of sub-vocalization, that literally one does talk to himself when thinking. To the ears of the Killer this subvocalizing process was audible as sound.

He heard the war secretary mention the Big Shot’s name, the Doctor’s, think of the coming of Frazzini, mouth over his own plans, ambitions— and all in a fraction of time quite long to him. The taxi-driver, knocked limp for the moment, recovered with a curse, and took his foot from the gas.

“Hey, you!” he bellowed, lunging at the Killer with intent to grab him by the collar. “What do you mean by this, hey?”

The Killer watched the lunge with impersonal interest. Bah! The fellow was slow! He seemed to float through space, split seconds being minutes. The killer brushed him away lazily, and watched him going backward in the same leisurely fashion to collapse in a heap from which he did not stir. But to the war secretary the action had taken place with almost unbelievable swiftness. He had recognized Killer Mike, as Killer Mike had recognized him, and knew that he was condemned by the Big Shot and his life

In the very instant that the driver surged forward he drew his automatic and fired. But the Killer’s eyes caught the gesture. Without trouble he avoided the bullet and threw out his fist. Struck by what he never had a chance to see. Vincent Asbury sagged back.

Again the Killer laughed, an eerie whisper of a laugh, and turned and was gone so swiftly that to the staring occupant of the second-hand Buick that had pulled up behind the taxi, and to the man in the office of the greenhouse bordering one side of the road, he seemed to flicker and vanish into nothing. The taxi stood with throbbing engine.

“What the devil!” said the driver of the second-hand Buick, rubbing his eyes. Then he clambered from his seat and peered into the taxi. At what he saw, he gave a gasp of horror. The man from the greenhouse came running across the road.

“What’s the matter?” he panted.

“Matter— matter— Can’t you see what’s the matter?” He pointed wildly at the bloody features of the taxi-driver, at the horribly crushed in skull of the secretary of war. “That’s what’s the matter! Murder! Two men have been killed!”

But the Killer did not hear. He was gone like a wraith. The world seemed to stand still as he glided along. The scent of mankind was heavy in his nostrils—but above all the individual odor of Asbury. It hung in the hot air like a thin, evil trail. It smelled, thought the Killer sardonically, like one might expect the crooked, oily mind of Asbury to look. It was not difficult to follow. In a few minutes he was at the hotel.

The clerk did not see him, nor the bellhops sitting in a braided row. The fat man coming down the stairs to get the exercise his doctor ordered, wondered what it was that brushed by and nearly sent him sprawling. He could have sworn that a voice said, “I beg your pardon,” but no one was in sight. Much shaken in mind and body he waddled to the elevator shaft and rang the bell. Blast the doctors! It was a hot day and too much exertion made a man feel queer.

Still following the trail, the Killer came to the correct door and opened it by the simple expedient of pushing. Yes, there was the television-radio. His face twisted into a deadly grin. Every atom and fibre of his body was dancing. Put him on the spot, would he? Why nothing could touch him now. nothing—neither men nor gun! And if he wished—

With a swift, lithe motion he opened the television case.

In the underworld of America they spoke of him with bated breath, his friends admiringly, fawningly, his enemies bitterly and with curses. Rumor had it that he had started his career in a gambling house. When Big Tim was chief, he had been his favorite guard. When Little Arne broke through Big Tim’s defense, those in the know said that Arne had first fixed it with him. If that were the truth, it hadn’t kept him from driving past Little Arne’s flowershop one day and riddling him with lead.

He was ambitious, ruthless, and with more than a touch of organizing genius. The result was that where other gang leaders went to the graveyard or abroad, he built up a vast illegal business of forty millions a year. Over his immediate followers he ruled with an iron hand, the whilst he wiped out competition with bribes— or a machine gun. He was king, despot, the one and only chief of racketeers, Frazzini, the Big Shot, the most feared and powerful man in the country.

His Chicago home was a fortress. It stood on the top of a skyscraper. The approach to the roof was cunningly guarded. Frazzini knew, none better, that there were envious souls who would like to bump him off— some for the honor of doing it—and some to step into his shoes. At the particular moment we see him, he has turned from speaking to Asbury on the television-radio. He is a big man with broad shoulders, forty years of age.

“Get in touch with the boys at once, Jim,” he directs his lieutenant, “and tell them we leave for the West within the hour. Have the planes made ready.” Jim Landy nods and leaves the room.

He is a man of few words. Soon Frazzini hears the mechanic tuning up the engines of the specially constructed autogiros. With rotating wings of the most advanced design, they could take off in a fifteen-yard run, land at twelve miles an hour, and carry twelve passengers apiece in their comfortable cabins. For a moment Frazzini hesitates and then rings a bell. To the man answering, he speaks tersely.

“Tell my wife I wish to see her.”

She came at length, a queenly creature in a trailing robe, with sleek, dark hair and a colorless face.

“Well?” she questioned tonelessly.

“Nothing,” he said, “only I thought you’d better know—” He broke off abruptly. “Why in the devil are you going on like this?”

“Am I going on?”

“You know what I mean.”

Her eyes flashed.

He said stormily: “It's me who ought to be sore. Who picked you out of a dance hall, made you what you are?”

“As if I should be grateful for that! What am I, anyway?”

“You are my wife.”

“Oh, yes, your wife. How wonderful! The vice-king’s wife.”

“You didn’t talk like that when I asked you to marry me."

“Would to God I had!”

He paced the room for a moment.

“Gloria,” he said more softly, laying a hand on her shoulder, “you used to love me a little. Isn’t there some of that liking left?”

She shrugged from his hand. “Don’t touch me, please. Your hands are dirty.”

“Because I run booze?”

“You know what I mean. I don’t care about that. It’s the other vile traffic.”

“I swear to you—”

“Please don’t lie,” she said contemptuously. “You lied to me before. I found out.”

His mouth narrowed into a thin slit. “From that traitorous rat Killer Mike! But he won’t betray any more secrets.”

“What have you done with him?”

“Ha, ha! So that touched you, eh? Worried about Mike?”

“You know that’s a falsehood.”

“Yes,” he almost whispered at length, “I believe it is. If I didn’t—”

With a gust of hungry emotion he swept her into his arms.

“Gloria, Gloria! Look at me, girl! You’re mine, see! And you love me in spite of yourself! Yes, you do. I’m bad and vile, but you love me! I’ve got to go on— don’t you see that? I can’t stop— and Killer Mike is in my way. It wasn’t only because he spoke to you— I could forgive that— but he actually plotted!” He freed her and stepped back. “Plotted to split the gang and rule in my shoes.” He raised a fateful hand. “Do you think he can do that and get away with it? No, I must make an example of him for the benefit of others. Killer Mike is doomed.” He stopped abruptly. “What is that?”

The whirr of the television-radio sounder filled the room. He stepped forward and threw the switch, standing so that the blue light irradiated his features, scanning the burnished screen set against the wall.

“Hello, Frazzini speaking. Is that you, Asbury?”

A thin eerie laugh swept out of the device.

“No,” said a metallic voice. It seemed to come from an immense distance. “This isn’t Asbury. This is—”

Frazzini’s wife gave an audible gasp. In the burnished depths of the screen grew a face, a cold, dark face with frosty gleaming eyes.

“Killer Mike!” exclaimed Frazzini.

“Yes,” said the metallic voice, “Killer Mike.” Again the eerie laugh swept the room. “You’ll never see Asbury alive again. I was obliged to remove him. Do you understand, Frazzini? Place him on the spot—as I intend to place you! No,” went on the metallic voice, “I’m not crazy, not all hopped up as you think. Not with coke. I can read your mind, Frazzini. You are thinking you’ll wire the police to hold me until you come. How clever you are! But not as clever as me, Frazzini. Not as clever ‘as the Man-plus’.”

4: Into the Desert

THE sensational automobile murders, the slaying of the famous Doctor Jukes and his assistant, were headline news. Within an hour of their discovery, a half dozen extras were being sold.

“Mystery Murders on The St. Mary’s Road,” screamed one black streamer. Others shrieked "Fiendish Murders Shrouded in Mystery: Police Baffled.”

The two witnesses of the automobile murders were quoted.

“The taxi suddenly stopped, just like that,” said the driver of the second-hand Buick. “I had to jam on the brakes hard to keep from running into it.”

“Yes,” corroborated the other, “I was looking out my greenhouse windows and saw the whole thing. A man was clinging to the side of the taxi, though I don’t know where he came from.”

Both witnesses described the man as being of medium height, clad in white trousers and a soft white shirt. Neither saw the actual killings. One was too far away, and the other’s view was interrupted by the rear of the taxi.

Doctor Jukes’ servant testified that a young man answering such a description had been a patient of the Doctor. But the greatest sensation transpired when one of the bodies in the taxi was identified as that of Vincent Asbury. The identification was made by Robbins, the valet, and by his private secretary.

“Yes,” said the secretary, “Mr. Asbury had been in Tucson incognito on government business.” No. he didn’t know what that business was, but it had to do with the department he headed and a chemical discovery of Doctor Jukes.

“Secretary of War Murdered For War Secret,” captioned one paper. Excitement was running high when the chief of police received the following telegram from Chicago authorities:

CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION THAT ASBURY, WAR SECRETARY, KILLED OR INJURED. ARREST AT ONCE MICHAEL FLIANI, ALIAS ‘KILLER MIKE,’ NOTORIOUS GUNMAN AND GANGSTER. DESCRIPTION: HEIGHT, FIVE FEET, SEVEN AND ONE-HALF INCHES; WEIGHT, ONE- HUNDRED FIFTY POUNDS; COMPLEXION DARK, WITH BLACK HAIR AND GREY EYES. LOOKS LIKE AN ITALIAN. OFFICERS ARRIVING BY AIR. ANSWER.

“Well what do you think of that!” muttered the chief of police. But he was canny enough to keep the telegram from the reporters; and in the early hours of the morning a big autogiro fell silently out of the heavens and settled on the flat roof of the Green Hotel.

From it stepped Frazzini and went at once to the suite Asbury had reserved, surrounded by a bodyguard of slim hard-faced men with hands on ready weapons. With him was a prominent member of a Chicago strike-breaking agency, really a henchman of Frazzini. The Big Shot sent word to the agency head that he wanted to see him. It was actually a summons from the gang chieftain. The head of the strike-breakers stared with reverent awe at the king of racketeers. Frazzini did the talking.

“This Killer Mike used to be a member of my organization, see? But he raised a ruckus and I threw him out. Why he wanted to kill Asbury is a mystery to me.” Of course the visitor had his own opinion about that. He knew of the rumors connecting the war secretary with the man who spoke. “Now I want my men to cooperate with yours in hunting him down and through you I wish to offer a five thousand dollar reward for his capture. Understand?”

The visitor nodded. He understood.

“There’s another planeful of my men coming. Will be here in an hour or so. This killer Mike must be captured. He—”

The low whisper of a laugh filled the room.

“What’s that?” cried Frazzini. The gunmen were on their feet, weapons in hand.

“Ha, ha, ha!”

Frazzini whirled. Behind him, almost against the wall, stood the figure of a man in white duck trousers and a light shirt. He hadn’t been there a moment before, no one had seen him enter, and yet he had walked through a corridor dominated by armed men, entered the open door of the room with a stride.

“Ha, ha, ha!” It was the Killer laughing. He saw the weapons of the gunmen go up— slowly— as if manipulated by men scarcely able to move. When Frazzini whirled it was as if the motion would never be finished. Lazily he sidestepped the loafing bullets. But to the astounded gunmen it appeared as if he had flickered out of existence at one point and into it again at another. The bullets buried themselves in the wall. There was a splintering of plaster, and from somewhere beyond frightened cries.

“It’s no use, boys,” said the Killer. “Bullets can’t hit me.”

The guards shrank back with scared faces. At bottom they were a superstitious lot. Knowing nothing of Doctor Jukes’ accelerating solution, the phenomenon witnessed admitted of but one explanation. The Killer was dead. They were fighting the Killer’s ghost!

But Frazzini understood. The marvelous discovery of Doctor Jukes was being utilized by Killer Mike. He was speeded up in sense and faculty.

“So you realize the truth,” hissed the Killer. “Yes, I am speeded up. I can even hear your thoughts. Compared to me, ordinary men are as snails. I can out-move, out-think, out-fight— Ah, you would, would you!” His hand flicked out and the Chicago strike-breaker, of sterner metal than his companions, went back with a crash and lay in a still heap upon the floor. "I have waited for you, Frazzini, as I said I would, to put you on the spot. But the spot isn’t here. First, I’m taking you for a ride, Frazzini.”

He moved. Chairs went over with a crash. A gunman fired. There was a stifled scream, and then seized in an overmastering grip and carried forward at tremendous speed, the king of the racketeers lost consciousness.

STRANGE things were happening to the Killer.

Bearing his burden he strode through the night like a wraith. First he went north until he reached the desert, and then northwest. He was Killer Mike, the Big Shot and the empire of gangsterdom was in the hollow of his hand. And not alone the empire of gangsterdom— that of America, the world. He laughed, and his wild eerie laugh echoed through the night. White-faced men and women paused to listen.

“A coyote,” said some. “No coyote ever howled like that,” said others.

Official Tucson was in a ferment. Posses were being formed. But the killer strode on. Not only every sense and faculty was now accelerated, not only every atom and molecule, but under his clothes his flesh was shimmering, expanding, as the atoms and molecules whirled in ever increasing orbits. The heat was unbearable.

He tore the binding clothes from his body as he walked. Where the Oracle Road turned off from the main highway he paused. Passing motorists saw the gigantic figure of a naked giant brooding under the stars. This giant carried the limp figure of another man in his arms. Stopped by policeman, the motorists related what they had seen. But when the former, armed with machine guns and gas bombs reached the spot, the Killer had vanished.

It was four o’clock in the morning when he came to Oracle. Sleep hovered over that mountain hamlet of eighty-nine souls and no one witnessed his coming. He had covered hundreds of miles in his wandering, quartering this way and that. Once he had even stood on the peak above the “window” in the Catalinas and looked down upon Tucson far, far below. He approached Oracle from the south, over the hills and ranges, and on a rocky eminence behind the small town set his burden down.

Frazzini was not dead. He came to himself in the clear mountain dawn lying on a stubble of rock and coarse grass. His uncomprehending eyes at first took in the sky, the rugged scenery and northward purple distance. He sat up, and in the act of doing so saw the Killer. But was this Killer Mike, this naked, seven-foot giant whose silvery flesh seemed to seethe and churn? Frazzini was a brave man, he possessed undoubted physical courage, but in this situation was something so strange, so weird and uncanny, that the heart fluttered in his bosom, the blood ran cold, and for the first time in his life he really understood the meaning of the word fear.

In the ever deepening dawn a Mexican lad passed with a string of burros and stared fearfully at the two figures on the crest of the hill.

“Madre Dios!” he cried.

His ragged heels beat a frightened tattoo into the sides of his mount as he urged it by at its best speed. Where the narrow trail crossed a dirt road a half mile beyond, he met a car of armed men and a woman.

“Si, senors,” he said, in answer to their questions, “I saw two hombres.” He crossed himself devoutly. “One naked. Surely the devil himself! And the other—” But the armed men and the woman were running up the trail down which he had come.

Madness, or perhaps it was a clarity of vision beyond that of earth, had the Killer in its grip. The acceleration of every sense and faculty was sweeping swiftly towards an incredible climax. Earth and sky were shifting, changing. The thoughts of Frazzini beat on his ears. Who was this Frazzini? Frazzini was his enemy. But what meaning could that phrase have for him when the whole world was heaving, churning. His glowing eyes chained those of the other.

“Be still,” he commanded. Frazzini was silent. Even his thought was stilled. It was good to be free of the clamoring noise that was the other’s terrified mind, twisting, turning.

Even as it ceased, he forgot Frazzini’s existence, for Frazzini disappeared; the rugged hillside, the sweep of brown landscape going down to the river and sweeping up again, miles away, to the Mammoth Range, was also blotted out, and he gazed into a new world, another dimension!

It was an ethereal place, a place of indescribable loveliness, and far away under the rays of an emerald sun formed the spires and domes of a mystical city. Out of the crystal clarity of western sky, just after the sun has dipped below illusive hills and before night comes to mantle the desert, seemed this city fashioned, and almost as impalpable and remote— a crystal city in an opalescent world.

Was it the figment of a delirious mind, or did it actually exist an octave or two beyond the vibration of earthly matter? If it did really exist. then only the Killer’s vision achieved a note high enough to glimpse it. For his body never passed beyond the fleshly rhythm that chained his feet to this world.

Though he ran like the wind and came to the environs of that mystical city, though he saw celestial beings of a god-like stature and beauty, and wonders indescribable, though he wandered through the space they occupied, everything remained just that to him— space, and nothing more. Sometimes things were below him, sometimes above and sometimes all around. But wherever they were, he could not touch, he could not handle, he could not make himself real, and in the end they faded.

When the accelerating fluid in his system reached its weird climax and began to recede, it was with devastating swiftness. The giant body shrunk in on itself, the eyes became burnt out coals. Searching for the vision he had lost, the mystical city always beyond the horizon, hungry and thirsty and mad, the Killer wandered through the desert, until at last he stumbled over a mound of earth and lacked the strength to rise.

THEY FOUND Frazzini sitting dumbly on the hillside. But the Big Shot only stared at them uncomprehendingly.

“What’s the matter, chief?” begged his henchmen. Frazzini did not answer. His wife who had come to Tucson on the second plane, sank beside him and took him in her arms. Forgotten was her bitterness. “Tony,” she wept, “Tony! Don’t you know me, dear?”

But no recognition or intelligence would ever look out of those blank eyes. The perverted genius that would have made the very government of the United States a department in an empire of vice was dead— and ironically enough, the man who had willed this mind, this genius to cease, and who alone could bid it again to exist, had forgotten the fact, was himself mad.

But though they found Frazzini, the Killer was never found. Rewards were offered for him, dead or alive. The desert was scoured. But all in vain. Once a group of searchers paused at an old Mexican woman’s abode. This was near the New Mexican border. No, the old woman said, they tended the sheep, she and her son out there, but they had never seen any one.

But she told them nothing of the one great experience of her life— how her son had died from a snakebite the week before and in her loneliness and grief she had prayed the Virgin Mary to restore him to her. Nor how she had dreamed that this prayer was answered, and when she had gone to the grave, it was to find a man’s body lying across it. The man did not look like her son, it is true, but she was old and superstitious and persuaded that a miracle had happened.

So for her the dead had risen, and the Killer became her son.

Only somewhere in his befogged brain remained the memory of a celestial city— the old woman who understood English and who listened to his mutterings, thought he talked of the heaven he had left to return to her— and as he tended the sheep he would stare longingly at the blue distance. Sometimes the old mother would have to come and lead him home.

But of other things, he remembered nothing.

________________

4: A Will and a Way

W. W. Jacobs

1863-1943

The Strand Magazine Mar 1901

Wagga Wagga Express, 20 July 1901

THE OLD MAN sat over the tap room fire at the Cauliflower, his gnarled, swollen hands fondled the warm bowl of his long pipe, and an ancient eye watched with almost youthful impatience the slow warming of a mug of beer on the hob. He had just given unasked-for statistics to the visitor of the inn who was sitting the other side of the hearth. His head was stored with the births, marriages, and deaths of Claybury, and with a view of being entertaining he had already followed, from the cradle to the altar and the alter to the grave, the careers of some of the most uninteresting people that ever breathed.

"No, there ain't been a great eight o' single men here aiboute," he said, in answer to a question. "Claybury 'as always been a marrying sort o' place— not because the women are more good looking than others, but because they ere chaiper."

He reached forward and, taking up his beer, drank with relish. The generous liquor warmed his blood, and his eye brightened.

I'VE BURIED two wives, but I 'ave to be careful myself, old as I am, he said,  thoughtfully. There's more than one woman about 'ere as would like to change 'or name for mine. Claybury's got the name for being a marrying place, and they don't like to see even a widow-man. Now and agin we've 'ad a young feller as said as 'e wouldn't get married. There was Jem Burn, for one it ain't a month ago since four of 'is grand children carried him to the churchyard; and there was Walter Bree: 'e used to prove as 'ow any man that got married wasn't in his right mind, and 'e got I three years for wot they call bigamy.

But there used to be one man in these parts as the Claybury women couldn't marry, try as they might. He was a ugly little man with red 'air and a foxy face. Thay used to call 'im Foxy Green, and 'e kept 'appy and single for years and years. He wasn't a man as disliked being in the company o' women though, and that's wot used to aggeravate 'em. He'd take 'em out for walks, or give 'em a lift in 'is cart, but none of 'em could get hold of 'im, not even the widders. He used to say  'e loved 'em all too much to tie hisself up to any one of 'em, and 'e would sit up 'ere of a night at the Cauliflower and send men with large families a'most crazy by calkerlatin 'ow many pints o' beer their children wore out every year in the shape o' boots.

Sometimes 'is uncle, old Ebenezer Green, used to sit up 'ere with 'im. He was a strong, 'earty old man, and 'e'd sit and laugh at Foxy till 'is chair shook under 'im. He was a lively sporting sort o' man, and when Foxy talked like that 'e seemed to he keeping some joke to hisself which nearly choked 'im.

'You'll marry when I'm gone, Foxy,' he'd say.

'Not me,' says Foxy.

Then the old man 'ud laugh agin and and talk mysterious about fox-hunts and say 'e wondered who'd get Foxy's brush. He said 'e'd only got to shut 'is eyes and 'e could see the pack in full cry through Claybury village, and Foxy going 'is 'ardest with 'is tongue 'anging out. Foxy couldn't say anything to 'im because it was understood that when the old man died 'e was to 'ave 'is farm and 'is money; so 'e used to sit there and smile as if 'e liked it.

When Foxy was about forty-three 'is uncle died. The old man's mind seemed to wander at the last, and 'e said what a good man 'e'd always been, and wot a comfort it was to 'im now that 'e was goin'. And 'e mentioned a lot o' little sums o' money owed 'im in the village which nobody could remember.

'I've made my will, Foxy,' he ses, 'and schoolmaster's takin' care of it; I've left it all to you.'

'All right,' ses Foxy. 'Thankee.'

'He's goin' to read it arter the funeral,' ses 'is uncle, 'which is the proper way to do it. I'd give anything to be there, Foxy, and see your face.'

Those were 'is last words, but 'e laughed once or twice, and for a long time arter 'e'd gone Foxy Green sat there and wondered at 'is last words and wot there was to laugh about.

The old man was buried a few days after, and Foxy stood by the grave 'olding a 'andkerchief to 'is eyes, and behaving as though 'e 'ad lost money instead of coming in for it. Then they went back to the farm, and the first thing the schoolmaster did was to send all the women off before reading the will.

'Wot's that for?' ses Foxy, staring.

'You see,' seys the schoolmaster; 'them was my instructions. It's for your sake, Mr. Green; to give you a chance at least, thays wot your uncle said.' '

He sat down and took out the will and put on 'is spectacles. Then 'e spread it out on the table, and took a glass o' gin and water and began to read. It was all straightforward enough. The farm and stock and two cottages, and money in the bank, was all left to Josiah Green, commonly called Foxy Green, on condition—

There was such a noise o' clapping, and patting Foxy on the back, that the schoolmaster 'ad to leave off and wait for quiet. On condition, he ses, in a loud voice, that he marries the first Claybury woman, single or widow, that asks 'im to marry her in the presence of three witnesses. If he refuses, the property is to go fo 'er instead.

Foxy turned round like mad then, and asked Henery White wot 'e was patting 'im on the back for. Then, in a choking voice, he asked to 'ave it read agin.

'Well, there's one thing about it, Mr. Green,' ses Henery White; 'with all your property you'll be able to 'ave the pick o' the prettiest gals in Claybury.'

'Ow's that?' ses Joe Chambers, very sharp.

'He's got to take the first woman that asks 'un, don't matter wot 'er age.'

He got up suddenly, and without even saying goodbye to Foxy, rushed out of the 'ouse and off over the fields as 'ard as 'e could go.

'Wot's the matter with 'im?' ses Foxy. Nobody sould give any answer, and they sat there staring at each other, till all of a sudden Henery White jumps up and goes off if anything 'arder than what Joe Chambers had done.

'Anything with the drink?' ses Foxy, puzzled like.

They shook their 'eads agin, and then Peter Gubbins, who'd been staring 'ard with 'is mouth open, got up and gave the table a bang with 'is fist.

'Joe Chambers 'as gone arter 'is sister,' he ses, 'and Henery Wihite arter 'is wife's sister, as 'e's been keeping for this last six months. That's wot they've gone for.'

Everybody saw it then, and in two minutes Foxy and the schoolmaster was left alone looking at each other and the empty table.

'Well, I'm in for a nice thing,' see Foxy. 'Fancy being proposed to by Henery White's sister-in-law! Ugh!'

'It'll be the oldest ones that'll be the most determined,' said the schoolmaster, shaking 'is 'ead. 'Wot are you going to do?'

'I don't know,' ses Foxy, 'it's so sud den. But they've got to have three witnesses that's one comfort. I'd like to tell Joe Chambers wot I think of 'im and 'is precious sister.'

It was very curious the way the women took it. One an' all of 'em pretended as it was an insult to the sex, and they said if Foxy Green waited till 'e was asked to marry he'd wait long enough. Little chits o' gals o' fourteen and fifteen was walking about tossing their 'eads up and as good as saying they might 'are Green's farm for the asking, but they wouldn't ask. Old women of seventy and over said that if Foxy wanted to marry them he'd 'ave to ask, and a good many times too.

Of course, this was all very well in its way, but at the same time three Claybury gals that was away in service was took ill and 'ad to come 'home, and several other women that way away took their holidays before their relations knew anything about it. Almost every 'ouse in Claybury 'ad got some female relation staying in it, and they was always explaining to everybody why it was they 'ad come 'ome. None of 'em so much as mentioned Foxy Green.

Women are artful creatures and think a lot of appearances. There wasn't one of 'em as would ha' minded what other folks said if they'd caught Foxy, but they'd ha' gone half crazy with shame if they' d tried and not managed it. And they couldn't do things on the quiet be cause of the three witnesses. That was the 'ardship of it.

It was the only thing talked about in Claybury, and Foxy Green soon showed as he was very wide-awake. First thing 'e did was to send the gal that used to do the dairy-work and the 'ouse-work off. Then 'e bought a couple o' large, fierce dogs and chained 'em up, one near the front door and one near the back. They was very good dogs, and they bit Foxy hisself two or three times so as to let 'im see that they knew wot they was there for.

He took George Smith, a young feller that used to work on the farm, into the 'ouse, and for the fust week or two 'e rather enjoyed the excitement. But when 'e found that 'e couldn't go into the village, or even walk about 'is own farm in safely, he turned into a reg'lar woman-hater. The artful tricks those women 'ad wouldn't be believed.

One day when Foxy was eating 'is dinner William Hall drove up to the gate in a cart, and when George came out to know wot 'e wanted, 'e said that he 'ad just bought some pigs at Rensham and would Foxy like to make fust offer for 'em. George went an, and when 'e came out agin he said William Hall was to go inside. He held the dog while William went by, and as soon as Foxy 'eard wot 'e wanted 'e asked 'im to wait till 'e'd finished 'is dinner, and then he'd go out and 'ave a look at 'em.

'I was wantin' some pigs bad,' he ses, 'and the worst of it is I can't get out to buy as things are.'

'That's wot I thought,' ses William Hall ; 'that's why I brought 'em to you.'

'You deserve to get, on William,' ses Foxy.

'George,' ses Foxy. 'George,' he ses, turning to 'im.

'Yes,' ses George.

'Do you know muoh about pigs ?' 'I know a pig when I see one,' ses George.

'That's all I want,' see Foxy ; 'go and 'ave a look at 'em.'

William Hall gave a start as George walked out, and a minute afterwards both of 'em 'eard an awful noise, an' George came back rubbing 'is 'ead and saying that when 'e lifted up the cloth one o' the pigs was William Hall's sister and the others was 'er nephews. William said it was a joke, but Foxy said he didn t like jokes, and if William thought that 'e or George was going to walk with 'im past the dog 'e was mistook.

Two days arter that Foxy, 'appening to look out of 'is bedroom window, saw one o' the Claybury boys racing 'is cows all up and down the meadow. He came down quietly and took up a stick, and then 'e set out to race that boy up and down. He'd always been a good runner, and the boy was 'alf-blown like. 'E gave a yell as 'e saw Foxy coming arter im, and left the cow 'e was chasin' and ran straight for the 'edge, with Foxy close behind him.

Foxy was within to yards of 'im when 'e suddenly caught sight of a blue bonnet waiting behind the 'edge, and 'e turned round and went back to the 'ouse as fast as 'e could go and locked 'imself in. And e 'ad to sit there, half-busting, all the morning, and watch that boy chase 'is best cow up and down tie meadow without daring to go and stop 'im.

He sent George down to tell the boy's father that night, and the father sent back word that if Foxy 'ad got anything to say agin 'is boy why didn't 'e come down like a man and say it hisself? '

Arter about three weeks o' this sort o' thing Foxy Green began to see that 'e would 'are to get married whether 'e liked it or not, and 'e told George so. George's idea was for 'im to get the oldest woman in Claybury to ask 'im in marriage, because then he'd soon be single agin. It was a good idea, on'y Foxy didn't seem to fancy it.

'Who do you think is the prettiest girl in Claybury, George?' he ses.

'Flora Pottle," ses George at once.

'That's exactly my idea,' ses Foxy; 'if I've got to marry I'll marry 'er. However, I'll sleep on it a night and see 'ow I feel in the morning.'

'I'll marry Flora Pottle,' he ses when 'e got up. 'You can go round this afternoon George and break the good news to 'er.'

George tidied hiself up arter dinner and went. Flora Pottle was a very fine looking gal, and was very much surprised when George walked in, but she was more surprised when 'e told 'er that if she was to go over and ask Foxy to be 'er 'usband 'e wouldn't say 'No.'

Mrs. Pottle jumped out of her skin for joy a'most. She'd 'ad a 'ard time of it with Flora, and five young children since 'er 'usband died, and she could 'ardly believe 'er ears when Flora said she wouldn't.

' 'E's old enough to be my father,' she ses.

'Old men make the best 'usbands,' ses George, coaxing 'er; 'and, besides, think o' the farm.'

'That's wot you've got to think of,' ses her mother. 'Don't think o' Foxy Green at all; think o' the farm.'

Flora stood and leaned herself up agin a chest 'o drawers and twisted 'er hands, and at last she sent back word to say that she wanted time to think it over.

Foxy Green was very much astonished when George took back that answer. He'd thought that any gal would ha' jumped at 'im without the farm, and arter going upstairs end looking hisself in the glass 'e was more astonished than ever.

When George Smith went up to the Pottles agin the next day Flora made a face at 'im, and 'e felt as orkard as if 'e'd been courting 'er hisself a'most. At first she wouldn't 'ave anything to say to 'im at all, but went on sweeping out the room, and nearly choking 'im.

Then George Smith, wot was a likely young feller, put 'is arm round 'er waist, and taking the broom away from 'er, made 'er sit down beside 'im while 'e gave 'er Foxy's message. He did Foxy's courting for 'im for an hour, although it only seemed about five minutes to both of 'em.

Then Mrs. Pottle came in, and after a lot of talk Flora was got to say that George Smith might come agin for five minutes nex' day. Foxy went on dreadful when 'e 'eard that Flora 'adn't given an answer, but George Smith, who liked the job much better than farming or making beds, told 'im she was coming round, and that 't was only natural a young gal should like to be courted a bit afore givin' in.

'Yes,' ses Foxy, biting 'is lip, 'but 'ow's it to be done?'

'You leave it to me,' ses George Smith, 'and it'll be all right. I sit there and talk about the farm as well as wot you could.'

'And about me, too, I s'pose?' ses Foxy, catching 'im up.

'Yes,' ses George; 'I tell 'er all sorts o' lies about you.'

Foxy looked at 'im a moment, and then 'e went off grumbling. He was like a good many more men, and because Flora Pottle didn'e seem to want 'im 'e on'y fancied 'er the more.

Next day 'e sent George Smith up with an old brooch as a present, and when George came back 'e said 'e thought that if it 'ad been a new one it would have done wot was wanted.

You can't keep secrets in Claybury, and it soon got round wot Foxy Green was arter. That made the other women more determined than ever, and at last Foxy sent up word that if Flora wouldn't ask 'im to let 'im know, as 'e was tired o' being a prisoner, and old Mrs. Ball 'ad nearly 'ad 'im the day afore. It took George Smith two hours' 'ard courtin' afore he could get Flora Pottle to say 'Yes,' but at last she did, and then Mrs. Pottle came in, and she shook 'ands with George, and gave 'im a glass o' beer.

Mrs. Pottle wanted to take 'er up to Green's farm there and then, but Flora said no. She said they'd go up at eight o'clock in the eyenin', and the sacrifice should be made then. Foxy didn't like the word 'sacrifice' at all, but if 'e'd got. to be married 'e'd sooner marry Flora than anybody, and 'e 'ad to put up with it. 'There'll be you for one witness,' he ses to George, 'and Mrs. Pottle is two; wot about the third?'

'I should 'ave 'alf-a-dozen so as to make sure,' ses George. Foxy thought it was a good idea, and without letting 'em know wot it was for, 'e asked Henery White and Joe Chambers, and three or four more 'e 'ad a grudge against for trying to marry 'im to their relations, to come up and see that 'e'd been able to pick and choose.

They came at ha'-past seven, and at eight o'clock there was a knock at the door, and George, arter carefully looking round, let in Mrs. Pottle and Flora. She was a fine-looking gal, and as she stood there looking at all them astonished men, 'er face all blushes and 'er eyes large and shining, Foxy thought getting married wasn't such a bad thing arter all. He gave 'er a chair to sit on and then 'e coughed and waited.

'It's a fine night,' he ses at last.

'Beautiful,' ses Mrs. Pottle.

Flora didn't say anything. She sat there shuffling 'er feet on the carpet, and Foxy kept on looking at 'er and waiting for 'er to speak, and 'oping that she wouldn't grow up like 'er mother.

'Go on, Flora,' ses Mrs. Pottle, nudging 'er.

'Go on, Flora,' ses Henery White, mimicking 'er.

'I s'pose you've come to ask Foxy a question by the look of it?'

'Yes,' said Flora, looking up. 'Are you quite well, Mr. Green?'

'Yes, pes,' says Foxy; '-but you didn't come up 'ere to ask me that.'

'It's all I could do to get 'er 'ere at all, Mr. Green,' ses Mrs. Pottle; 'she's that shy you can't think. She'd rather ha' 'ad you ask 'er yourself.'

'That can't be done,' ses Foxy, shak ing 'is 'ead. 'Leastways, I'm not going to risk it.'

'Now, Flora,' ses 'er mother, nudg ing 'er agin.

'Come on, Flora Pottle,' ses Bob Hunt; 'we're all awaitin'.'

'Shut your eyes and open your mouth, as if Foxy was a powder,' ses Henery White.

'I can't,' ses Flora, turning to her mother. 'I can't, and I won't.'

'Flora Pottle,' ses 'er mother, firing up.

'I won't,' ses Flora, firing up too; 'you've been bothering me all day long for over so long, and I won't. I 'ate the sight of 'im. He's the ugliest man in Claybury.'

Mrs. Pottle began to cry and say that she'd disgraced 'er; but Foxy Green looked at 'er, and 'e ses, 'Very well, Flora Pottle, then we'll say no more about it. Good evening.'

'Good evening,' ses Mrs. Pottle, getting up and giving Flora a shake. 'Come along, you tantalizing mawther, do. You'll die an old maid, that's what you'll do.'

'That's all you know,' ses flora, smiling over at George Smith ; 'but if you're m fond xf Mr, Green, why don't yott ask 'im yourself ? He can't say no.'

For half a minute the room was as quiet as a grave, and the on'y thing that moved was Foxy Green's eyes as he looked fust at the door at the other end of the room and then at the window.

'Law bless my soul!' ses Mrs. Pottle, in a surprised voice. 'I never thought of it.'

She sat down agin and smiled at Foxy as if she could eat 'im.

'I can't think why I didn't think of it,' she ses, looking round. 'I was going out like a lamb. Mr. Green—'

'One moment,' ses Foxy, 'olding up 'is 'and, 'I should be a terrible' bad, cruel, unkind husband  to anybody I didn't like. Don't say words you'll be sorry for afterwards, Mrs. Pottle.'

'I'm not going to,' ses Mrs. Pottle; 'the words I'm going to say will be good for both of us; I'm far more suitable for you than a young gal— Mr. Green, will you marry me?'

Foxy Green looked at 'er for a moment, and then 'e looked round at all them grinning men wot he'd brought there by mistake to see 'im made a fool of.

Then in a low, 'usky voice he ses, 'I will.'

_______________________

5: Chicago Confetti

William J Rollins Jr

1897-1950

Black Mask March 1932

"HENRY FULLER murdered? Sure, I know it!”

I looked at him over my cigar. I don’t like cigars, but all dicks, public and private, are supposed to wear them; and far be it from me not to have the right office furnishings when a prospective client comes in.

“Sure, I know it!” I said again, taking the weed out of my mouth for a bit of fresh air. “Don’t you suppose I take the Times and read the tabloids?”

“Well,” he said, “you see I’m his nephew.” He said it quiet, like he’d been used to being the old man’s nephew all his life; which I suppose he was. But to me it was like the lad’s telling me he was Santa Claus.

I stood up quick, and gave Santa a cigar from the other box. Then I sat him down in a deep seat that’s hard to get out of, and looked him over.

Considering he’d basked in the light of twenty million all his life, he didn’t have such a healthy tan. One of the studious kind, with goggles that made him look nearer forty than the thirty which I suppose he was. Thin light hair, thin body, thin-colored blue eyes … and yet, looking them over as he started talking, I got the feeling that, if necessary, he could lay down his “Iliad,” or whatever it was that guy Joyce wrote, and get to business. He was talking business now as he leaned over my desk— business that I like to hear.

“You see, Mr. Warren,” he explained in a slow voice, “the police are doing the best they can—”

“The police,” I muttered, waving them aside. That’s part of my business.

“Exactly. The police. But the family decided we wanted to leave no stones unturned to discover the— the—”

“—” I helped him.

“Exactly. The— that— that—”

“Bumped him off,” I finished.

“Exac—” He hesitated, frowning. “Well, not exactly 'bumped.' There were no bruises on the body. He was shot with a revolver.”

“I know. In his own apartment. Monday evening about eight o’clock. Nobody present. You see,” I explained, “crime news is this biddie’s society page. And you want—?” I raised my eyebrows questioningly.

“Your help, if we can have it.”

“Hmm.” I picked up a note book and studied its blank pages. Having just started in on my own, this was my first prospect. I nodded thoughtfully; shut the book and looked up. “Good,” I told him. “And now as to terms.”

Coleman Fuller (that’s what his card said; but it hadn’t meant anything to me when I first read it) stood up.

“If you can drive around with me to Mr. Bond’s— that’s our family lawyer— we can fix that satisfactorily, I think,” he said.

I glanced at the clock.

“How’s half an hour?” I asked; then, when he nodded: “I got a little business to transact. That’s Harley Bond, in the United Trust Building?”

“The same.” He bowed and crossed to the door. I stopped him as he opened it.

“By the way, Mr. Fuller,” I said; “how’d you happen to come to me? Satisfied customer, I suppose?”

He smiled, a little self-consciously.

“Well— not exactly,” he murmured; “you see— well, my cousin George and I looked through the book, under detective agencies, and we flipped a coin— that was George’s idea— to see whether we’d start at the top or bottom. The Z’s won, and yours was the first.” He laughed, sort of embarrassed, bowed again and went out.

I gave him time to get to the street and then jumped up, clamped on my hat and went out to the corner quick lunch, where I transacted my business. I was eating light those days. Fifteen minutes later I was in my snappy second-hand bus (I’m not telling what make; but it will rattle up to sixty) and in another ten minutes I was walking through the Gothic lobby of our latest Cathedral of Business. And there I meet young Professor Fuller himself again, standing at the foot of the elevators and talking to the dizziest blonde that never glorified the American girl.

He looked sort of flustered.

“On time, I see, Mr. Warren,” he murmured; and he said something to the girl that I didn’t hear, lifted his lid, and stepped into the elevator. I nearly lost the car looking after her as she went out. She wasn’t hiding much, and I didn’t blame her.

“Charming girl,” said Mr. Student as we shot up; “just an— er— acquaintance.”

“Well,” I shot back, stepping out at the thirteenth; “she may be an acquaintance to you, but if I had your luck in knowing her, she’d either be a friend or an enemy.” We walked down the corridor, and in a couple of minutes I was standing before Harley Bond, Attorney-At-Law, and one of the stiffest priced ones in our town.

I’d seen him before, of course, in and out of court—a small terrier sort of man of about forty-five. This was the first time I’d seen him so near to, though; and as he looked at me, across his desk as big as a banquet table, I noticed the little bags under the eyes I’d missed before, and I figured Mr. Bond liked his liquor, and liked it long. He had a pleasant smile, though.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Warren,” he said in that easy drawl of his that made such a hit in court. He stretched out his hand. “I’ve got to admit that if the family here had consulted me,” he added as we shook, “I would have recommended a better known agency, but—”

“We’ve never had a failure yet,” I broke in.

His eyes twinkled at that.

“I figured as much,” he said. Harley Bond was nobody’s fool. “However,” he sat upright, becoming serious, “now you’re hired, let’s get down to business. First—”

“—the terms,” I finished for him.

His lips formed in a silent whistle at that.

“I see a successful future ahead of you, Mr. Warren,” he murmured. “The terms, however, have already been fixed by Mr. Carl Fuller, Mr. Henry’s eldest brother. Ten thousand dollars to whomever finds and successfully proves the guilt of the murderer. To be paid on the sentencing.”

I nodded shortly and mentally waved the lunchroom goodbye. Then I turned to minor details.

There was little known about the murder, it seems, other than what the papers had stated. Henry Fuller had gone to his apartment, 38 Bradford Street, at seven-thirty Monday evening, to dress for dinner. At eight-thirty his valet, who had been on an errand for him (he had a dozen alibi witnesses) returned, to find him dead, shot through the heart. A doctor was called, who put the time of death at eight o’clock. Henry Fuller was unmarried. So far as was known he had no enemies.

“And the will?”

Mr. Bond coughed.

“The will divided the property equally among his two sisters and two of his three brothers,” he replied. “The third— John— had not been on the best of terms with him. Mr. John is— er—” Again the lawyer coughed, “the father of Mr. Coleman here.”

I turned to our young student, who so far had said nothing. He nodded solemnly.

“Exactly,” he murmured. “But I, myself, have been on the best of terms with Uncle Henry for over a year now. I think, if he had lived a little longer, he would have— well, er—”

“I see,” I delicately finished for him. “But he didn’t, so you’re out of luck.” I stood up. “And now, Mr. Bond, I’ll take a look around. You might give me the names and addresses of a few bereaved friends and relatives before I go,” I added.

I looked them up that afternoon, all the unfortunate kinfolk who were going to divide twenty million among them following the unhappy death of old Fuller. I didn’t expect to find anything, and that’s what I found. It wasn’t till early the next afternoon that I got around to the valet.

Jobson was his name. He was still sticking around the old man’s apartment, with the consent of the relatives, squeezing the last hour out of free lodgings until the advanced rent was used up and he’d have to move into cheaper quarters.

The building itself was a dingy affair, the kind only a millionaire can afford to live in, long, four storied, on an old aristocratic street. I had a job routing out the elevator-boy-of-all-work from where he was sleeping in an alcove by the switchboard, but at last I found him, and after a ten-minute ride up three flights, I stumbled along the dark corridor, discovered the right door, and finally was standing in the presence of the formidable Mr. Jobson himself.

He sat me down very politely when he found what I wanted; sat my one hundred and seventy pounds on the flimsiest gilded chair in all that gilded drawing-room, so he had the drop on me from the start.

“Anything I can do to help solve this horrible affair, sir, I’ll be delighted to do,” he rumbled, standing over me. “But, unfortunately, I am completely in the dark—”

“It seems to have been a dark night all around,” I interrupted him.

He bridled at that.

“I have alibis, sir!” he declared; “at least a dozen people—”

I flapped my paw.

“Save your alibis until you’re accused of something,” I said. “I just dropped in for a pleasant little chat.”

Well, we talked about art and literature and one thing and another, but I wasn’t getting any news that I’d come for, and I was just about to let up on him and lift anchor— when I settled back again.

I’d caught him looking at the clock.

Now there are ways of looking at a clock, and then there are ways.

Well, I kept him there for another twenty minutes, and at the end of that time he was as nervous as a debuting opera singer with the hiccoughs. At last he couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Warren,” he said, “but I must put off this pleasant conversation till another time. You see, I— I’ve an engagement with a—” he leered; “you understand, sir, don’t you!”

I jumped up.

“I sure do,” I answered. “You should have told me before. I have those engagements myself sometimes.” And I gave him leer for leer. In another minute I had shaken hands with him and watched the door shut tight; and the moment the latch clicked, I was sliding across the hall to the elevator, where I rang the bell and kept my finger on it till I heard the bang of the metal door below. Even then I wasn’t comfortable.

“Anybody on the switchboard downstairs?” I asked the boy as he opened the door for me.

“Nobody, sir. Just me,” he replied.

I nodded. I was safe there, anyhow. And if Jobson went out or anybody came in to keep an appointment, I could spot them from that little alcove.

“Listen, son,” I said, as we gently parachuted down to bottom, “they seem to give you a lot of jobs to tend to around here.”

“They do that, all right,” the boy grumbled. He opened the door. I passed out and waited for him.

“I guess an extra ten spot wouldn’t look bad to you, hah?” I said as he settled down by the board.

He eyed me funny.

“Well…” he murmured. I patted him on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry; nothing like that, buddy. I just want to take your switchboard job off your hands a few minutes.” I pulled my hat over one eye and set my jaw in the proper fashion, and the kid got it right away.

“You’re a dick!” he whispered, all eyes. Then his glance dropped to the roll that was coming out of my pocket, and he slipped off his seat and gave me the switchboard. I pulled on the earphones and waited. I know how to run a board; a good dick has to know a lot of things. Even being an expert window-washer comes in handy because— but you’ve read all about that.

Then came the first call. Mrs. Winslow’s maid wanted those lamb chops right away, and wanted them in a loud voice; and then in a lower voice she added: “bring them around yourself, Tony dear, if you can.” Then came the second call on the heels of that one, and Hattie Somebody and I learned all about what the doctor thought of Jessie’s kidneys. He didn’t think they were so hot, Jessie was glad to tell us; and I was beginning to be afraid I’d pulled a boner—that either Jobson was going out or somebody was coming calling (in which case I’d hear the ring for the elevator) when a third call was put in.

“Duval 8390.” That was Jobson’s deep voice; there was no mistaking it.

I plugged in, passed on the call, and waited. Not long. I heard a receiver come off. Then:

“Hello.” A woman’s voice.

“Is this Miss Kelly?”

“Yes.”

“This is Jobson. You know— Jobson.”

“Yes.” Short, noncommittal.

“I wanted to know is— is you know— there?”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Well, get ahold of him right away. Right away, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And tell him not to come around here. It’s dangerous. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Tell him to meet me at the hotel there. At that room— what’s the number?”

“311.”

“311. In about an hour. You understand?”

“Yes. I’ll tell him.” Her receiver went down, and his after it. I pulled out the plugs, and plugged in central.

“Listen, operator,” I said when she answered. “Give me the address of Duval 8390, like a good girl, will you? I know it’s a hotel.”

“Sorry, sir,” came the mechanical answer, “but we’re not allowed—”

“I know, I know, honey,” I cut in; “but be big hearted just for once, will you? You see, I just got a tip that my wife and another chap—”

I heard her giggle. A moment’s wait. Then:

“Duvaal, a-it— thrrree— noine— O, is the Stopover Inn, sir, on the Eastern Highway.”

I let out a noiseless whistle. I don’t think I even thanked her. I was thinking just one thing. I was thinking that I was going to earn that ten grand—if I ever got it.

For the Stopover Inn, on the Eastern Highway, was the hangout of the Lewis gang!

I canned the whistle, hopped up, and patted the boy on the head.

“Nice boy,” I said; “you’ll be a millionaire some day,” and passed him the ten. Then I went back to my room, packed my bag with things I didn’t need and was on my way.

The Stopover Inn is about ten miles out, and when I swung around the last corner, a flivver was just drawing up and I saw Jobson get out. I tore on past, interested in the scenery across the road, drove on for another mile, and then turned back.

I parked my car near Jobson’s, got out, dragged out my suitcase, and walked into the small dirty lobby. There was just a dumb-looking, pimpled-face boy behind the desk, and I was glad of that.

“Room,” I snapped. “Top floor, where I won’t get the traffic so much. I’ve got a lot of heavy sleeping to do.” One glance had already told me there were only three floors to the place; ten rooms to a floor, five front, five back.

The boy stared at me stupidly.

“You got to wait for Miss Kelly to get back,” he drawled without moving his lips; why use your lips when your nose will do? “She’s upstairs.”

But Miss Kelly was just whom I didn’t want to see, she or anybody else who might ask questions, aloud or to themselves. I wanted to hold that off as long as I could. I glanced at the keyboard at my side. 31 l’s key was missing from its hook; but most of the other keys were there.

“Baloney,” says I, like I meant it. “I’m not waiting for Miss Kelly or anybody else. I just come in from five hundred miles.” Luckily my car was turned the right way if they investigated. I glared at him. “I don’t want Miss Kelly, I want sleep! You understand? Here!” I made a dive for the key of 313, which was near me. “Show me a room!”

But the boy’s hand was on the rack nearly as soon as mine.

“That room’s taken,” he said, mighty quick for him. “I’ll show you a room.” He took the key of 317 and came out from behind the desk. He almost fell over my suitcase as he shambled towards the stairs. I picked up the valise and followed his shuffling steps.

The two flights of stairs were narrow, dark and dirty, and so was the corridor at the head of the second flight. But both stairs and corridors were carpeted so thick you couldn’t hear your own footfalls; which had its uses and had its drawbacks. The boy showed me my room, a narrow back room with one window, and started off again. He was so dumb he didn’t even fool with the shades till I came across with a tip.

“Here,” I said, as I slipped him a quarter; “and I don’t want to be disturbed. I’m sleeping through twenty-four hours.” I slammed the door and noisily locked it, and gave him two minutes before I softly turned the key again, opened the door and stepped outside.

It was always night in that windowless corridor, but it wasn’t any Gay White Way. One gas-jet burned in the middle, and even that looked pretty discouraged. I locked my door from the outside, and walked down the hall—I didn’t have to tiptoe on that thick carpet— to the last back corner room, number 311.

There were two voices inside, a woman’s and a man’s; but I didn’t stop to listen. I moved back to the room beside it, number 313. I listened there a second; then I pulled out a pass key.

Yes, it was unoccupied. A regular cheap hotel room, that was mostly bed. The bed used to be brass. You could tell that by the bits that glittered here and there over the rough rusty iron. There was one window that faced a large but mangy orchard in back, and one stiff-backed chair. I noiselessly pulled the chair over to the door that connected with 311, but which was locked with its keyhole stuffed. Then I sat down and waited.

I heard the woman speak. She must have been standing near the outer door, talking to somebody back in the room.

“Well, when he comes, I’ll send him right up,” she was saying. She had a nice, musical voice. I figured it must be Miss Kelly. “I called him right after you phoned. He ought to be here any minute.”

There was a grunt right beside me. Jobson must be lying on the bed. The door opened and closed. I couldn’t hear her feet as she walked away, past my door, down the hall.

A half an hour passed, with nothing more exciting than an occasional creak of the springs as Jobson twisted on the bed. I made myself as comfortable as I could on that lousy chair and waited; I think I even dozed once or twice. Then, all at once, I was sitting upright, ears cocked I heard the click of the outer doorknob in the next room.

Jobson sat up on the bed; I could hear the springs creak.

“Well,” he grunted, “you took long enough getting here.”

There wasn’t an answer until the door was shut and the key creaked in the lock. Then a low voice mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

“Uh-huh,” Jobson answered; “well, that’s all right. Now let’s get down to business.” And with that he moved off the bed and I heard him thump across the room, probably to a chair near the other bird. I pulled my own chair even closer to the door and stuck my ear against it. Then I got down on my knees and tried my ear at the key hole. I even took a chance at pulling out the wadding, but that wouldn’t work. And all I got for my pains was a thick mumbling conversation.

True, now and then I caught bits of conversation, and they were interesting listening, though it was always Jobson’s voice, never the other guy’s.

“How much?” he said, once. “Well, give me ten grand and little Freddie Jobson will be just a memory to you from then on.”

I pulled one of my silent whistles at that. “Trying to blackmail the Lewis gang?” I thought: “I can think of safer things than that— like sleeping on railroad ties.” Another time he said something about poor, dead Mr. Fuller, and his tone of voice brought to mind the bereaved relatives. And then came the fast one.

I heard him jump up, like he was sore.

“Listen, brother,” he says, forgetting discretion; “don’t pull that line on me. I might not have been there when you bumped him off, but I was listening in when you was there that same afternoon. And I heard him speak about the hundred grand the gang was trying to hold him up for. And I heard you say: “Listen,” I heard you say; “I think I can show them the light if you give me fifty thousand— personally.” And then: “I’ll be around to get your decision shortly before eight.” I wonder he didn’t take a shot at you then, instead of waiting till you got back to try it, like you said. How would that story sound before a jury, brother? Hah? And how would it sound if the gang heard about it?’

So! I smiled to myself. That was why Jobson dared try blackmail! It wasn’t the gang he had to face, but somebody connected with it who had tried to double-cross them! And right then there’s the little buzz of a telephone in their room.

I glanced around the room here while I heard one of them thump across the floor. There wasn’t any phone here; probably 311 was used for business conferences only, and the only connecting phone was in that room. I heard Jobson’s voice muttering something into the mouthpiece. Then he slammed down the receiver with a vicious jerk.

“Listen!” he said in a hoarse whisper, and I could almost see him whirl around to his companion. “She says to tell you the cops are on their way upstairs! I must have been shadowed, and— and— for— sake, I can’t be found talking to you! Hide, man! Hide!”

And then, for the first time, I heard the other guy’s voice; just a half dozen low words:

“Just a second. I want to tell you….” His voice became a mumble; then a whisper; then I couldn’t hear it at all, and I figured he must be hiding. And he only had a minute to do it before I heard the thump of two or three men’s feet coming along the hall. Oh, yes, I could hear it. It takes more than a thick carpet to deaden the step of a good bull.

They passed my door, went on to the next, and rapped, short and sharp. I heard steps cross the room, heard the key turn in the lock and the door open. And then I got a jolt.

A deep voice spoke, and I recognized it right away for Police Sergeant Rooney’s.

“Well,” he says; “so here’s our little bird! You was right after all, Mr. Bond!”

And I heard Bond say in that slow drawl of his:

“Oh, I knew we’d find him, all right, Sergeant!” And I sat back and scratched my head.

So Bond was doing a little detective work on the quiet, was he! Taking a crack at that ten grand reward himself! I set my lips tight. I didn’t know how he’d trailed Jobson here— unless by the bull stationed outside the apartments on Bradford Street—and I didn’t give a damn; but when they brought that other bird—the guy what had done the shooting— before the Captain, little Percy Warren (Yeah, that’s the name!) would be tripping alongside them, ready to put in part claim for the bonus! There are ethics in every trade, and Harley Bond was going to stick to lawyering, or I’d know the reason why! But I wasn’t feeling so cheerful while I sat there listening to Jobson’s pulling his sob stuff.

“Why, I wasn’t doing nothing, Mr. Bond! I just came around here because—” And Bond cuts in:

“Nobody’s accusing you of doing anything, Jobson,” he says; “I just wanted to have a little talk with you to see if you knew anything more about this affair; and I asked the sergeant to come along and—”

And just then a truck went rumbling by; and though it was on the other side of the inn, it shut off all connections with the next room. Before the air cleared and I could tune in again it was all over.

“Well, come along!” Rooney snaps.

I stood up, ready to join the party and do a little arguing; and then I stopped short. Had they found the other guy— the bird that did the dirty work? They’d had time, maybe, to dig him out from wherever he was hiding; but how did I know they knew he was there in the first place? I crossed the room softly, slipped my key in the lock, turned it, and waited. If they had the killer with them, that was my tough luck; if they didn’t, it was Bond’s. I’d produce him in my own good time, when the lawyer wasn’t around to split the bonus.

I listened while they piled out the door and locked it behind them; waited while they tramped past my door. Then I opened up a crack and peeked.

There were four of them going down the hall. I could just make them out as they passed under the gasjet: the sergeant, another cop, Bond, and Jobson—and nobody else! I chuckled to myself, apologized to Lady Luck, and shut the door quick; for just then I spotted a girl down the hall ahead of them. Miss Kelly, probably.

I locked the door, pulled the key out, and slipped across to the window. With that girl out there, the hall wasn’t safe. I pulled the window way up, gentle, and stuck my head out.

It wasn’t easy going. I planked my toes on a little ledge, pressing them tight against the side of the house; and I edged along, quiet as I could until I had my hand on the window-sill of 311.

In a split-second I had my gun out, pointing up. I was a pretty target if the killer had heard me or came wandering my way, but I figured I’d get the first crack, if he stuck his head out.

He didn’t, though; so I eased up above the water-line, leveled my gun on the sill. Then I shifted my grip from my hand to my elbow, jerked back the curtain and looked, my finger quivering on the trigger.

There wasn’t anybody in the room; at least in sight. In another second I was over the sill and inside.

It was a bigger room than the others, several chairs, a table, a bed— I slid across to the bed and pulled a quick old maid; but nobody was hiding there. I crossed to the door. Then I swung around and went over to the window on the side of the building and looked out.

There was a maple there, reaching to the roof. One branch stuck out, almost to the window. It wasn’t a hefty branch; I’d hate to shinny down it, and I’d just put on an act myself that wasn’t so bad. But I figured a slim active guy could manage it, if it was that or the chair.

He could have done it; but— I stood a minute, staring out the window. There was something wrong, somewhere; something that didn’t fit into the picture. I turned back, stared at the floor, thinking. I stooped to look under the bed again, just to satisfy myself.

“Well? Lose something?”

I whirled around. A girl was standing in the doorway. That had been a fast one! I sauntered towards her.

“Just a hairpin. It doesn’t matter.”

She forced a little grin at that— nice lips, they were; but her eyes watched me pretty hard through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. And now her smile got a little curl to it as she walked in to meet me.

“What did you want it for? Clean a pipe, or just pick a lock?” She halted behind a chair, rested her elbows easily on the back of it, and looked me up and down. “I suppose you know you made a mistake and got in the wrong room?” she said.

I sat down on the bed, took out my cigarettes and lit one, pretty slow, giving her look for look. I was stalling for time. I wanted to size her up, get what there was to get from her; and at the same time I was trying to put together a little puzzle that was working in my mind. She wasn’t hard to look at, for all the glasses and her hair twisted in a knot at the back of her head like a biddy’s on Monday morning. Somehow she looked familiar, but I shoved that off; I can only work on one thing at a time.

I said:

“You’re half right on your supposition, Miss Kelly.”

Her eyebrows rose at that.

“Miss Kelly, eh? Pleased to meet you, Mr.—”

“Burns. William J.”

She had to laugh.

“You don’t go in for false whiskers like most of them, do you?” she said. Then, going back: “So I’m half right, am I? And as this is the wrong room, I take it you didn’t make a mistake in getting into it.”

“Good for Vassar!” I applauded; then I got serious. “How long have you been working here, Miss Kelly?” I asked. Not that I wanted an answer. I was busy thinking.

“Let’s see your tin medal before you start the third degree,” she answers, coolly. “And while you’re about it,” she drawled, when I didn’t make a move, “you might tell me how you happened to get in this locked room. It’d make interesting reading.”

I looked up at her quick. I’d got hold of something.

“Do you know Jobson?” I demanded.

“Let’s see the medal.” She flicked a fly carelessly off her cheek.

“Do you know Jobson?” I repeated it in a monotone.

She was tapping her toe, easy, looking bored-like at the ceiling.

“Let’s see the medal.”

And then, in the same monotone:

“Do you know a murderer was in this room with him?”

She forgets the ceiling at that. Her eyes shot down to mine, big and startled behind her glasses. I could see the color draw out of her cheeks.

“You saw— a murderer— here?” she almost whispered.

“I’m not saying what I saw.” I leaned forward, studying her a moment. She wasn’t faking that horror; that was easily seen. But I wasn’t worrying about that right now. I had a theory, and I was taking a long shot at it.

“Miss Kelly,” I said, slowly and distinctly; “you were in the hall after the cops left with Jobson and another chap— Mr. Bond, the lawyer?”

She hesitated a moment. She swallowed hard; then she nodded, without speaking.

“Now!” I snapped; “answer me this, and answer me right! Did you see another man sneak out of here after they left?”

Again she gave me a long hard stare, like she was doing a lot of thinking. Then, finally, she nodded.

“Yes, I did,” she said, low. “I thought he was one of the party, so—”

I waved explanations away.

“Never mind that,” I said; but I felt a quick thrill. It looked like my guessing was coming out right. “What did he look like?” I asked.

“A medium, thin fellow; white face, big nose; sort of mean little eyes—”

That was a description of Spike Lewis himself. I jumped up.

She drew in her breath. Then she went on. “Listen. I’ve tended to my own business so far. But I can learn a lot of interesting news if I want to, and in quick time.” She thought a moment. “Where are you going to be at eight o’clock?” she asked at last.

“Who knows? Maybe in the morgue with the unidentified bodies.”

She tossed off a polite smile, and then was all serious.

“Listen. Take this number.” I pulled out my note book. “Ashley 2836. That’s a long way from here. I wouldn’t dare give you this number. Phone that number at eight, sharp. If I’m not there, I haven’t any news for you. If I have, I’ll be there.” She stuck out her hand, pal fashion, looking me in the eye. “And I think I’ll be there,” she finished.

We shook.

“Good enough for you, Miriam!” I says, starting down the hall. “I’ll give you a ring.”

I was half way down the next flight when I heard her call. I looked up, and saw her grinning over the banister.

“Believe it or not,” she calls, softly, “it’s Des-demona!” Two minutes later I was in my car and bowling towards town.

I was pretty well pleased with myself as I tore along. I was damned certain who the killer was now; all I had to do was catch him, and catch him with the goods. That may sound hard, and I knew it wasn’t going to be any cinch. But Percy Warren wasn’t being paid easy money for an easy job. When I reached town, I turned off the highway and slowed her up a bit. Then I sat up with a bang.

“Why, you ham sleuth you!” I muttered to myself.

Here I’d been handing myself orchids for snappy thinking. And if I was right, it meant that Jobson, instead of being safe in jail, held as material witness, suspicious character, or whatever the temperamental captain decided on, it meant he’d probably been freed to get himself murdered! I was only about ten blocks from the Bradford Street apartments, but I swung up to the curb by a drug-store, vaulted out, and ran inside to a phone booth.

Jobson answered after a minute’s ringing. I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard his voice.

“Listen, Jobson,” I said when I’d told him who I was, “are you alone there?”

He hesitated long enough so that I knew the answer.

“Yes, I am,” he growled.

“All right,” I snapped; “have it your way. But answer me this: did your little playmate come up the elevator with you, or did he sneak in some other way?”

I heard him suck in his breath. Then he turned and whispered something to somebody. I climbed inside the mouthpiece. There wasn’t any time for fooling.

“Jobson!” I called. “Jobson!”

He came back at that.

“What is it?” he says, sulkily.

“Listen, Jobson,” I says, sharp and quick. “You’re playing with dynamite! You get out of that apartment right away, you understand? That guy’s going to—” I stopped.

There was a curious plop! in my ear.

“Jobson!” I called.

Silence. Then a faraway sounding thud.

“Jobson! “

A second I stood listening to nothing. Oh, I knew the truth, all right, but I just hung on, listening. And then, all at once, I wasn’t listening to nothing.

I was listening to somebody breathing, close to the phone, somebody who was listening back at me. I slammed down the receiver, ran out to the car, and started her with a jerk, and in two or three minutes I was in the lobby of the Bradford Street apartments.

The overworked elevator boy was sitting on a stool in the elevator.

“Listen, kid,” I says, shaking him to wake him up. “Shoot me up to the third, as fast as this hearse can go!” And then, after he’d got it running: “And give me a pass key to the Fuller apartment!” I was afraid maybe mine wouldn’t work. “Snappy!”

I left him staring after me as I loped around the corner of the corridor. Another minute and I’d opened the apartment door and locked it behind me. Then I took a few steps into the front room, and stopped.

He was dead all right. His big hulk of a body lay sprawling on the floor below the telephone, where that gun with its silencer had dropped him. I noticed the receiver was back on the hook, though. And Jobson hadn’t done that.

I knelt down and took a quick look at him. But before I did, I knew Mr. Jobson had gone where all good blackmailers go, and in a second I was on my feet again. I hadn’t hoped to be able to help him, and I didn’t expect to find the killer around. But I did hope, if I scared him away soon enough, to find some sign of the bird’s job, so as to be able to nail it on him. I gave the telephone receiver the once-over.

Right away I could see it was wiped clean as a Wall Street sucker. I gave the room a quick look. I didn’t expect to find a special brand of cigarette butts tucked away in dark corners; if there was anything at all, it would be right under my eyes. And it wasn’t there. I moved down the carpeted corridor, off which were the rooms.

The first three were bedrooms. I hardly gave them a look. Then the bathroom; then the dining-room. I opened the door at the end of the corridor.

Here was the kitchen. There was a door open across, and a dark stairway, leading down, probably, to the tradesmen’s entrance. I figured that’s how the killer got in. There weren’t any doormen at that entrance. I looked around, and gave one of those Percy Warren whistles.

There were two empty glasses on the table, and a beer bottle beside them. They’d been talking it over here before I called. Here was how I would nail my friend— good ole finger prints!

I crossed the kitchen floor and reached for the glasses, planning to lift them by sticking my fingers inside.

“All right. Stick them up— and don’t turn around!”

I stuck them up. That deep hoarse voice meant business. I heard him take a step back.

“All right. Turn and look. Then turn front again.”

I gave a look around.

There wasn’t anybody in sight. But there was the muzzle of a gun sticking out the end of the corridor. That was all I could see, and that was all he meant for me to see. Just to show he wasn’t playing.

“Are you looking front now?” the voice snapped.

“Yep.”

I heard him cross the kitchen, catlike, till he was at the opposite wall.

“Now turn and walk down the corridor— slow!”

I turned and crossed to the corridor. I heard him come after me as I started down it. I reached the bathroom.

“Stop!”

I stopped.

“Right hand down— slow! Reach around for the key. Got it? Now put it in this side the door.”

I followed instructions. He was close behind me now.

“Get in there. Cross to the window, hands up!”

I crossed to the window. The door slammed and the key clicked.

I didn’t even bother to turn. I threw open the window, looked out, and gave a laugh. What a mistake that baby had made! In another second I was outside and running down the fire-escape.

There was an alley leading from the foot of the stairs to the street. It was surrounded on three sides by the apartment, and the only trouble was the tradesmen’s stairway led to another block. But I tore on down the stairs and down the alley, and almost ran into the dick that was keeping an eagle eye on the apartment.

He was leaning against the side of the building at the head of the alley, and I reckon the sound of my feet woke him up. He stepped out to block my way.

“What’s the big rush, buddy?” he says.

“Want to be on time for church,” I snarled; “out of my way, flatfoot!”

But he grabbed me by both arms.

“Now listen, Major,” he said, soft-like, “you don’t want to run like that, it’s bad for the heart. And besides, I’d love it a lot if you’d just stick around a bit, so’s we can get acquainted,” and a lot of soft soap like that that the old-time dick pulls before he slaps you down; and I had to argue with him and show him everything but my baby pictures before he let up on me.

And by that time my killer probably was home and had his two beer glasses tucked safe in bed. I made a couple of observations on the bull’s ancestors and walked around to Bradford Street; and just as I was passing the front of the apartment, a car drew up. I turned and looked.

Coleman Fuller was climbing out. He gave me a salute.

“Coming or going, Mr. Warren?” he asked. “I was just going up to see Jobson.”

I looked him over quick.

“He’s something to see,” I said, “if you like them dead.”

His mouth and eyes opened wide at that.

“Dead?” he whispered. “You don’t mean—”

“Don’t I, though! Go up and take a look at him. And while you’re about it, you might phone headquarters. I’ve kept it a little secret so far because I haven’t time to go down and fill out questionnaires, like they’d want me to. I’ve got a job on my hands.”

But he grabbed my arm as I was starting off.

“Was it the same man that killed my uncle?” he asked, all breathless.

“Same and identical.”

“And— and do you know yet who it was? Have you any idea?”

I tipped him a wink.

“There’s a little birdie been flitting around my ear the last couple of hours,” I said. I started to go on, but he was keen for more dope. “Listen,” I said, “if things go right, I’ll know more about it tonight. Maybe I’ll even have a little surprise package to bring you afterwards.”

“Tonight?” He stared at me. Then: “Where are you staying?” he suddenly said.

I thought quick, then decided it wouldn’t do any harm.

“Stopover Inn, on the Eastern Highway.”

“Stopover Inn?’ he gasped. “But isn’t that—”

“Yep,” I cut in. “The hangout of the wild and wicked Lewis gang.”

He thought that over. Then he looked at me funny and said: “Are you going there— all alone?”

“What do you want to know that for?” I asked.

He looked away.

“I just— it’s rather dangerous going there alone, isn’t it?” he murmured.

I started off.

“Don’t you worry about that,” I told him. “That’s your Uncle Dudley’s business. Just you have that ten grand ready, or else a first class undertaker.” I left him there, hopped into Lizzie, and started off. I wanted to be alone to think something over, for I’d just seen a bright light. Seeing Nephew Coleman had done that.

Desdemona. Take off those glasses, fluff up that knotted hair, throw a few glad rags on her in place of that starched dress, and what have you? You have a lady I’d seen just once before, and then only for a second.

And what did that prove?

I took that thought into a restaurant and chewed on it along with an extra tough steak. It might not prove so much, and then again it might prove a hell of a lot. The more I thought of it, the more I leaned towards the latter idea. It was just short of eight o’clock, and jumping up, I paid my check, went out to the nearest drugstore, and put in a call.

Desdemona herself answered the phone.

“Listen, Mr. Warren.” She spoke in a whisper, her lips close to the mouthpiece. “I’ve learned something. I know who did it and I know where to find him. Have you got a car?”

“She’s champing right outside here.”

“Well, listen. Can you drive out now and get me? I’m on Milton Boulevard in a drug-store. Number 1038.”

I whistled.

“That’s a hell of a long ways out, Juliette,” I said.

“Well,” she answered, “if you’re interested in landing this fish—”

“Right you are!” I cut in. “I’ll motor right along. But listen, lady!” I added quick. “You park yourself there, understand? Maybe I’ll put in a call or two for you on the way!” And I hung up, went out and whipped up the steed.

While I bowled along at a good pace, I kept my eyes peeled, watching particularly the traffic coming the other way. It must have been two miles out that I realized I was nobody’s fool.

The car— a high-powered bus— was coming slow. Over the headlights I could just make out a half dozen men’s heads, all turned to peer at the traffic going my way. Then they came alongside me.

I just had time to see six pair of eyes staring at me, to see one thin white face with a long nose— the face of Spike Lewis that decorates the front page of our papers so often— to hear a quick exclamation from all of them. Then they were way behind me, and I was working Elizabeth up to sixty. I gave a quick glance around.

The big car was swinging around. I turned front and tended to business.

The traffic was medium thick about now. For a couple of miles there weren’t any side streets, so the cars were buzzing right along, with nothing to hinder them. But I got Elizabeth going full steam and left the most of them pretty much standing still. After a minute or two I gave another look behind me.

Boy, was that bus eating up the road! In that quick eyeful I could see it charging down on me, a powerful looking baby, with a half dozen heads peering forward. I had the same chance of pulling away from her as if I was on foot with the gout. But I tore on for a bit longer.

Then I eased up, as much as I dared. Fifty. Forty-five. Forty. I can hear those lads now, roaring behind me. I saw one long chance, and I took it.

The road was clear all around me, except for a car ahead. I eased her some more, until I could near feel the hot breath of that bus, so to speak, on the back of my neck. Then, all at once, I clamped down on clutch and brake.

It all happened in a flash. There was a zipp! as that juggernaut went shooting past; six tense faces turned towards me; the loud crrrackrack-rack! of a machine-gun and zplop! as the tail end of the burst hit my fender. I went shooting in a crazy wide arc across to the left hand side of the road, up on the sidewalk, passing the lamppost on the wrong side; but not before, from the corner of my eye, I saw the poor innocent bozo in the car that was ahead of mine, suddenly slump in his seat.

I came down off the sidewalk— lucky it was low here— without stopping, and gave a look around. The car with the dead man had crashed into another, and the crowds were already pulling up to see the fun. Nobody noticed me; if they did, I suppose they figured I was getting out of the way and that it was the dead man they wanted. The juggernaut was probably a mile away by now, and I figured it would keep right on going. I glanced at a house number.

1104.

I’d come a bit beyond where I was heading for. In another minute I was drawing up at the drug-store number 1038 and climbed out.

Desdemona Kelly met me at the door, pale and fidgety.

“You got here all right, I see,” she said in a low voice.

I hauled up the eyebrows in the right fashion.

“Why shouldn’t I?” I asked.

“Why— I just thought— it seemed like I heard some shooting up the line,” she answered, weak-like.

“Oh that.” I shrugged. “Just some Chicago confetti. It seems they were after a guy in the car ahead of me— and got him. Got his wife and baby too,” I added, to make the story good.

Desdemona turned all white at that.

“The wife and baby?” she whispered.

I led her out to the car.

“Why not?” I murmured. “The baby might shake a rattle at them. Brave lads like that can’t take chances.” I steered her in, climbed inside myself, and we started off for town. I passed her a fag and we both lit up.

“Mr. Warren,” she said, slow and low, “I suppose you think I’m as good as a— as a murderer.”

“Depends on how good the murderer is,” I answered, easy, snapping my butt into the street.

“You think,” she went on, “I worked this racket.”

“Do I?” I murmured. “Tell us some more, Portia.”

“What you going to do?” she asked, after about a mile.

“Eat, dance, then back to the Stopover Inn a day or two—”

She sucked in her breath quick.

“Ain’t you— ain’t you—” she commenced; and then she stopped.

“Afraid of meeting some of the boys?” I finished. “That’s just what I’m hoping for. You see, Jessica, it just happens that I’ve got information that Lewis— or whoever the hell did the killing— was trying to double-cross the gang. That’s why he bumped old Fuller off!”

She stared at me hard at that. Somehow it seemed that her face—under the drug-store blush— went white again. She didn’t say a word. Just looked and looked at me.

We got back to the Stopover and found the place all dark. Desdemona slipped out the car first to get the lay of the land, claiming she didn’t want to be seen in my company. Then she came back to the door, wig-wagged me an “all’s well,” and I climbed down and went in after her. There was one green-shaded lamp lighted in the lobby, over the desk, and the pimpled-faced lad was sprawled under it, fast asleep.

Desdemona turned with her finger to her lips.

“Good night,” she whispered; blew me a kiss, and disappeared in a back room. I waded up the dark stairs, two flights, turned down the corridor to room 317. I shut and locked the door, and then pulled it open without bothering to turn the key back.

The bolt had been taken out of the lock.

“Oh, ho!” thought I; “there’ve been villains at work!” And I shut the door and shoved the flimsy washstand in front of it, just in case. I pulled out my little toy, gave it a quick loving once-over, and stuck it back in my pocket. Then I stood before the window, stripped to the waist, slipped on my pajama jacket, turned out the light, and got dressed again. After which I went over to the open window and looked out.

It was mighty dark outside, but not so dark that I couldn’t make out something I’d noticed this afternoon— a little roof, about two feet wide (probably over a bay window below) running from just beneath my window to the window of 319. It was a flat roof, I found when I stepped outside; it was mighty simple to slip over to the next room. I pulled open that window, soft and wary. I stood a second, out of gun range, ears cocked. Then I climbed inside.

I slipped over to the bed, ran my hand lightly over it. It was empty. I’d been pretty sure the room wasn’t taken. According to the keys on the board downstairs, I seemed to be about the only guest in the hotel. I crossed to the door, settled myself and waited.

I must have waited half an hour. I know I heard a clock somewhere outdoors strike two, and I must have waited ten minutes after that. Then, mighty faint, I heard something. I put my ear to the floor and listened.

It made all the difference in the world when I did that. I could feel the vibrations, and it sounded like three or four people must be sneaking up the corridor, along that thick carpet. I waited there a minute, ready to shoot into action. Then, all at once, I got puzzled.

I was hearing those sneaky steps, coming nearer. But I was hearing something else, too— or feeling its vibrations. It was a tiny vibration, coming right from the long board where my ear was.

I was sitting up like a flash, gun ready, pointed back into the room. Somebody was stealing across the floor towards me.

I got up to a crouch; edged along farther into the room, all set to jump to one side if the door opened. I must have made about a yard. Then a hand reached out and touched me softly on the face.

I don’t know why I didn’t fire. I reckon instinctive knowledge came with the feel of that soft hand. But that trigger was as near in action as I’d ever like to have it in somebody else’s hand.

I heard her suck in her breath.

“Mr. Warren,” she whispered.

“Present. Ready for all comers.”

“I was hoping you’d go back to your room before they came. Get back in the corner, for— sake!”

“I’m pretty well set, thanks.”

But now her voice was terrified, and no acting. I could tell that, even in the dark.

“Please!” she breathed; “in the corner; for my sake!”

“Well… anything for a lady, Orphelia.” I slunk back.

“And don’t show yourself!” I heard her hand softly turn the knob, just as there was a little grating sound in the next room— my washstand being pushed back. The door of this room opened, and a faint path of gaslight shot inside. She stepped to the doorway, blocking it.

“Well! What the hell are you birds doing around here?” Her voice was low, but cutting.

I heard a deep voice mutter something.

“Yeah?” she answered. “Well, you guessed wrong. Yes, I know"—she broke in quick on the guy— “but, you damned fool, don’t you know he’s got half a dozen playmates hanging round outside?”

That seemed to get them. There was a bit more mumbling; then I heard them slink away. She closed the door and stood there a second, looking my way, I guess. I stepped out.

“Rosalind,” I said, “my family thanks you. To tell the truth, we never trusted you much before; but—”

“Yeah?” she said, kind of rough. “Stow that. And go back bye-bye quick.”

“First, though, the reward,” I said; and I caught her and kissed her, a real two bits kiss.

She didn’t push me away. She stood there a bit, after I was through, and I could hear her breathing heavy.

“You’re a nice boy,” she said at last, way low. “Why don’t you quit this dick racket, and get out of this hotel— now!”

“Lady,” I whispered, “the charm of your company—”

But I could hear her turning away.

“All right,” she cut in, nonchalantly. “Do your window climbing act and get under the sheets.” She opened the door and shut it after her; and in another minute I was in and out the windows, and had settled myself for the night.

I figured afterwards it must have been four o’clock when I snapped awake. I sat upright (I’d been sitting on the floor, against the wall) and listened. He was coming now— the guy I’d been laying for. I watched where I knew the door was when I dozed off.

There was a little wait. Then it came again— the faint squeak of the rollers under the wash-stand as it was being moved. And now I could see a tiny slit of light showing where the opening door was. I got to my knees, crawled over to a point of vantage, and waited.

The slit grew wider. The light from the hall seemed almost bright, after the dead darkness. The stand squeaked, stopped; squeaked, stopped.

I waited till the door was open six inches. Then I stood up.

Plop!

The slug from the silenced gun dug into the wall back of me. With one gesture I swung around to the window, fired, and dropped.

The room rang with the shot for a while, and when it died away everything was still. The door and the stand didn’t move any more; it didn’t have to. Whoever had been shoving there had done his job.

Like a damned fool, I’d kept my eyes peeled on that door, just like they planned. And meanwhile the bozo himself had fired from the window; and now he was inside with me.

I softly drew myself up, ready, and then didn’t move. He didn’t move, either. We were both waiting. All at once there was a little clatter by the opposite wall.

Even while I pulled the trigger, I knew I was pulling my second boner. I know when somebody tosses a pencil across the room. It was just instinct, I guess, that made me fire. Right away something bit my shoulder, burning it. I rolled under the bed while the report was still whooping around. I figured he must be somewhere at the other end of it. I lay there, listening. My arm stung a little. Not much.

I guess I must have Indian blood in me. A gravestone is a noisy, nervous animal, compared to what I was. I did a little necessary breathing— not much—and that was all. The second hand went tearing round and round somebody’s clock. It was his move first.

Probably he thought at last he must have got me. Anyhow, he moved a bit. Not three feet from me.

I let him have it.

By the time the noise died away, I heard them running up the stairs and along the corridor. I rolled from under, and when I got to my feet they were tumbling in the room— a whole army, it sounded like. When they lighted the light, though, I saw there were only four. Sergeant Rooney and three bobbies. Yes, and Coleman Fuller, standing there, white as a sheet.

I said:

“Have you got the girl?”

It seems they met her coming down on their way up. She stepped in, under escort, when I spoke.

“You nearly pulled a fast one, Desdy,” I said, “when you got my eyes on that door you were pushing open. But then, you deserved that break, after the help you gave me.”

She gave me a gum-chewing look. I wasn’t a nice boy now.

“What do you mean, help you?” she said.

“Why, by keeping the gang out of talking— and shooting— distance from me when I told you I might spread the news your boy friend double-crossed them. If they could pop me at a bowing distance— like in a passing car— well and good; but it was better to leave the near-at-hand job to the boy friend himself, and keep the others away, wasn’t it!”

She started to speak; stops; looks sidewise at Fuller; then back at me.

“What makes you think he’s my boy friend?” she asked sullenly.

“Just clever deduction,” I answered, modestly. “It took me a while to recognize you, with your glasses and fancy get-up, as the dame I’d seen talking with young Mr. Fuller here in the United Trust lobby—” (I heard Fuller mutter: “my—!”)— but then, when you were so quick to remember seeing somebody—Spike Lewis, or anybody else— steal down this hall, after Sergeant Rooney here and Bond and Jobson left, it was easy to see you were protecting one special guy. I was already pretty sure who the killer was, though,” I finished. “Let’s give credit where credit is due.”

Rooney let out a strong Anglo-Saxon word at that.

“What’s this?” he said, staring at me. “The killer was hiding in that room when we was there?”

I shook my head.

“Only half right, Sergeant,” I answered. “He was in the room with you. But he wasn’t hiding.”

“He wasn’t hid—? He was in the—?” Rooney gawked at me like one of us is nuts. “Well, who the—” he stuttered; “where—?”

“All answered with one dramatic gesture, Sergeant,” I cut in. And I gave the bed a pull, rolling it a couple of feet towards the door.

Harley Bond was curled up behind the head. He wasn’t dead. But he was sleeping peacefully, and wasn’t apt to wake up for some little time.

I got my blood money when the jury’s foreman said the harsh words. Police Captain Starr was there when they handed it to me, and he gave me a pat on the head.

“It was easy enough, Captain,” I answered; downcast eyes go well at headquarters, particularly if you’re a private dick. “I was stumped for a while, because I figured Bond came into the room along with the police. A bunch of trucks came by just then, so I couldn’t hear much. But then I figured that what I did hear didn’t prove he wasn’t there right along, talking with Jobson.”

The captain shook his head slowly.

“He was a wise baby, that lad,” he muttered. “Strange how a man of his capabilities could get into a jam like this. But that’s the way of it, I suppose,” he said, turning philosopher. “Got doing business for a gang, saw how easy money could be pulled by playing between the gang and their sucker and was caught with the goods.

“Might have gone panicky; might have thought he was ruined unless he could stop the sucker talking. Anyway he pulled it. Then there was Jobson.

“He knew Jobson was being shadowed, so he phoned us he was meeting him to learn what he could, and for us to call around in half an hour and he’d tell us what he learned. Had himself protected coming and going.” The captain stood up. “A wise baby,” he said, half to himself; “about as wise as they make them.”

I folded my check carefully.

“Pretty wise, Captain,” I agreed. I looked lovingly at the piece of paper in my hand. “But not the wisest, Captain,” I cooed softly, “not the wisest.”

I turned to Coleman Fuller as we went out of the station. “As for you, Mr. Fuller,” I said, “I suppose when you learned I was going out to the Inn alone your motherly instinct made you sneak out the police force to protect me.”

“Exactly,” he said nodding solemnly.

“And I suppose,” I went on, “if the sergeant had appeared too soon and copped the prize himself, you know what would have happened to you?”

He nodded again, just as solemn. I looked him over, wondering if he was human.

“And I suppose,” I said, “you know what a low-brow like me wants to do when he’s come into a juicy bit of money?”

“Exactly,” he murmured. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a full pint flash, and after I took a good pull at it, he finished it off himself. “That,” he said, “is just about enough to last us till we reach the nearest speak.”

I looked him over again; and I liked his looks.

“Exactly,” I said.

______________________

6: The Devil’s Fire

H Bedford-Jones

(as by Gordon Keyne)

1887-1949

Blue Book, February 1947.

DRIVING WITH PARR, I got up to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles at an early-morning hour. We stopped at a filling-station downtown to gas up, and I sought the telephone. After some difficulty I got the residence of the Honorable Fitzjames Balfour— and a very English butler.

“This is Dr. Hugh Clements,” I said, “an old friend of Mr. Balfour just from India. Is he up and around?”

“Yes indeed, sir,” came the reply. “He’s always about early. Just now he’s somewhere downtown getting an important letter in the post.”

“The devil! Is Miss Trent there at his house?”

She was, and presently I had her on the phone, much surprised to hear my voice.

“Yes, I’m here, Virginia,” I said. “Parr is with me— Colonel Magruder’s man. Magruder was murdered last night.”

Her voice broke like a violin-string at hearing this. First her father, then Magruder!

“Balfour’s next,” I said. “Tell me what luck you had with him?”

“Oh, the very best!” she reported. “We were driving down today to meet with you and Colonel Magruder. He’ll do anything you want, will coöperate in any way you think wise. He’s downtown now, mailing a special-delivery letter to you.”

I queried her about the situation. She said to come at once to the house, and told where it was. Plenty of room, she said. Balfour would be delighted to have us.

“Be there in twenty minutes,” I said, and rang off before I could succumb to temptation and send her a kiss over the wire. She might not have liked that.

Balfour’s place was no large estate. He had retired from his prosecutor’s position in the Indian service just before the war’s end, and instead of going home to England, came to California. He got in on the ground floor, just before the real-estate boom, and took over a nice but not showy place in the new Santa Barbara development north of town. We gained it without trouble— a pleasant hillside house with a few big trees around, small grounds, and the walls of big estates on either side. There was a roomy garage with servants’ quarters above.

Virginia Trent welcomed us and took us in to breakfast; Balfour was not back yet. The house was thick with his pompous style— two English servants and so forth; a buffet breakfast, and that sort of thing. Having an unpleasantly fresh and stiff wound in my thigh, I was not very brisk, but said nothing of it. Parr disappeared, and I was thankful for a few moments alone with Virginia.

“Better save the Magruder story till Balfour gets back,” I said. “Your report is the main thing, my dear. If Balfour really means business—”

“Oh, but he does!” she exclaimed eagerly. “He knows where Chaffee lives, and has already written him. He has sent to San Francisco for guards. He’ll do anything you think best. Mrs. Balfour is visiting friends in Beverly Hills and won’t be back for a week, so there’s no interference.” She looked out of the window. “He’s back now.”

Balfour walked in and wrung my hand delightedly. He was ruddy, very fit, gray-topped, inclined to pomposity, quite a human fellow on the whole. I spared him the news about Magruder until he had breakfasted; when he found Parr was with me, he guessed the truth, and it shook him frightfully.

We gathered on his screened veranda with Parr and Virginia Trent.

“This meeting is your idea, Clements,” he said. “So take charge. Bad news?”

“Very. Let me begin at the beginning. Last week I landed here after seven years at my Lacpore hospital—”

I told how I had been thrown into contact with the Rajah from Hell (he was by right, and called himself, Rajah of Sirvath, but I knew no other name for him) and how he proved to be a man whom I had saved from death in Lacpore. Now he was wealthy, handsome, most capable; then, he had been destitute, a poor devil of whom I knew nothing.

“He holds me in real gratitude,” I went on, “but he’s imbued with venomous hatred for four men now in California. You, Balfour; Howard Chaffee, whom I don’t know; Sir James Trent and Colonel Magruder— and these last two he has already murdered.”

“But why?” puffed Balfour. “Why, in God’s name?”

“Because you people picked him up as a notorious dacoit or bandit, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He believes you framed him; he thinks you were unjust—”

“Look here, that’s all poppycock,” Balfour broke in. “Mere eyewash, Clements! I recall the case perfectly. Government was very grateful to us. You can’t accuse us.”

“I’m not; I’m telling you his warped beliefs. He was in Russia for a time and no doubt absorbed an anti-English bias. He escaped, you see, during the time of turmoil when the Japs were invading Bengal. He thinks himself a victim of injustice.”

I went on to describe the murders of Colonel Magruder and Sir James Trent; it was tough on Virginia and Parr, but necessary. We had no evidence on which to convict the Rajah of the murders. Last night his chauffeur had fired on us, wounding me slightly, and Parr had killed him. I held out my hand.

“There’s the proof. Parr found that silver ring beside the man’s body.”

I TOOK off the ring; everyone examined it. Plain silver, set with a black stone in whose heart burned a red flame— a stone unknown to any of us. I put it on my hand again.

“The Rajah wears a similar stone; therefore I fancy this ring has some connection with him and may serve us,” I said. “Now, Balfour, you have all the facts. My idea is that we should combine against this terror. If Magruder had listened to me and had come here yesterday, he’d still be alive. What d’ye think, Balfour?”

“I think you’re right,” he said. “I’ve written this Chaffee— he lives in San Francisco. We’ll hear from him. He was the one who identified our friend as the dacoit, by the way.”

“And you were the King’s Counsel who prosecuted him,” I said. “Trent was the judge who sentenced him, and so forth. He believes that you fellows framed him unjustly in India— and now he’s being tough on you. He murdered Trent, who was my friend, and I’m in the business to prove it and get him his just deserts. He knows it, and mind you, won’t hurt me; but his men will, quick enough. It’s an ironic situation.”

We discussed things. My idea was that Balfour would get a warning— the Rajah always gave warning before striking— before long; and that we should get in touch with Chaffee and make every effort to find the Rajah and put him behind the bars. So far, we did not even know what name he used, or where he was.

“Right,” said Balfour. “Chaffee should get my letter today. I told him to telephone me instantly he got it; we’ll hear from him. How about pulling in the police, what?”

THIS WAS argued and negatived, until we had some actual evidence. During the discussion I got out a cigarette and reached for an electric lighter that stood on the table. As I lit the cigarette, I was aware of a sensation, not painful, but annoying, in my finger. I looked at it. An exclamation escaped me.

The formerly black stone in the silver ring was now flaming red, as though afire! Yet it was not hot, barely warm enough to be felt.

I stared at it, still holding the lighter. So did the others. Virginia started to speak, then was silenced by another voice, faint but distinct.

“—nothing more at present,” it said. And it was not speaking English, but Hindustani! “Look for orders at noon and at midnight. Ghopal Singh or I will speak each time. I shall be in Santa Barbara only a few days. I want everyone to be alert and ready. That is all.”

The voice ceased. Also, the fiery glow died out of the stone in my ring, which again became black and glittering, with just a spark in its depths. When I put down the lighter and cord, the spark lessened.

Everyone, even Virginia, recognized the Hindustani if not the words. All were staring blankly around in search of the speaker. Except for us, the veranda was empty. I was the only one to recognize those tones; it shocked me stiff.

“What a singular vibrant voice!” exclaimed Virginia. “Who was speaking?”

“Dash it, that’s what I’d like to know!” broke out Balfour. “Hindustani! Some trick of yours, Clements?”

I tried to speak and could not.

“The ring turned red as fire, sir!” Parr cried, staring at me.

I stirred, came alive, found words.

“You have just heard the voice of the man we were discussing,” I said slowly, “the Rajah from Hell. Look— it’s just past ten o’clock! I picked up this lighter, touching the wire. The ring turned red. It didn’t burn, just turned red, blazing red. Touching that wire caused the contact, caused the supersonic waves to take hold, caused us to hear the speaker— some sort of electronics, you see! This ring belonged to the Rajah’s man who was killed last night—”

They all began to talk at once. Balfour pooh-poohed the notion, then became silent as I translated the words we had heard. He got a shock, also; evidently the Rajah was here in Santa Barbara. Presently I roused myself and spoke.

“Let’s accept what we all heard. Electronics— why not? We know the human body is an antenna, a radio aërial. We don’t know the half of what electronic developments arose from the war, here or in Russia. Our man was a refugee in that country, for a time. It’s far easier to believe than to disbelieve; that he’s an electronic wizard is a fact.”

“By your theory,” Balfour said, “that stone is a sort of speaker by which he’s in touch with his bally agents.”

“That’s my notion.” I handed him the ring. “Test it at noon, twelve o’clock. Touch a wire somewhere, get his broadcast. If it’s true, then we, as well as his own men, will be in touch with him.”

An electrifying thought; it brought us all up in sharp surmise. Ghopal Singh— as Parr exclaimed, that was not a Hindu name. Sounded like a Sikh. There might be a clue!

Balfour started up.

“I know the police chief here, slightly. I’ll run downtown now and get him after information on this Ghopal Singh— won’t need to lay any charge. The fellow may have a record, y’know. I’ll be back by noon to test the ring. Care to go, Clements?”

I did not. My wound, slight as it was, bothered me when in a car, so Balfour took Parr with him, for company, and Virginia remained with me.

This affair of the ring, while it might afford us a slight lead, rather hit us all under the belt. It indicated the diabolic craft and ingenuity of the enemy. It showed that he was in command of weapons far beyond our knowledge. To be blunt, it terrified us— it did me, at least. The fire in that stone which was not fire at all was frightening.

I bathed quickly, shaved, and rejoined Virginia, feeling much more myself. We went into Balfour’s library, where his telephone was located, with the possible call from Chaffee in mind. He had a remarkable lot of Anglo-Indian directories of all sorts, and I examined these with quick interest that kindled when I came upon a volume devoted to the Indian peerage and royal houses.

Seizing on this, we examined it together, found the royal Rajput house of Sirvath listed in great detail, and in breathless excitement conned the entries. The present ruler was a brother of the previous rajah, whose only heir had been a son, a young man now dead. He had died during the war, and his name had been Lajpat Rai.

“That’s the man,” said Virginia. “No one else answers, Hugh.”

“So what?” I said. “Our man claims to be the rightful Rajah of Sirvath. Now we have his name— Lajpat Rai. He may not use it, but that’s his name, and we have it. Beyond doubt he has papers to prove some other identity, by which he entered the country. Now we put the Immigration people on him, and spike his guns!”

“Grand!” she said. “How are you going to find him to do it?”

This was a facer— it was quite impossible, so far as I could see. However, I felt we had made a step forward, a definite step. His prison conviction under the identity of another man, a bandit, had ruined our man’s pretensions to the throne of Sirvath; this was one reason for his actuating hatred of Balfour and the others. Lajpat Rai was dead— but our Rajah from Hell had been Lajpat Rai.

We were still discussing this discovery when Balfour came back with Parr, and we found it was getting close to noon. Our host was radiant.

“Jolly good work!” exclaimed Balfour, upon hearing our report. “I’ve done very well, too— excellently, in fact! It was an inspiration to go to the police. They have complete data on this Ghopal Singh. He’s a Sikh, right enough; was a worker in the hot district south of Stockton, and is badly wanted for robbery and attempted murder up there last year. If he’s in town, they’ll dig him out, be sure of that— and his master with him. This Ghopal was a Communist, as well.”

“That’s no crime,” I said. “Andrei Gromyko is one too, and lives in a grand estate on Long Island and is popular in Washington.”

Balfour winked. “All right, my lad. Wait and see. Getting just on to noon— so we’ll try this ring of yours, what?” He reached out and took hold of a lamp-cord. “Any wire will do, I suppose. One minute before twelve, by my time.”

He stood there, his puffy red face looking rather foolish, but his eyes were intent and combative, his mouth had an ugly set; he could be a nasty customer, I thought, especially when browbeating some poor devil of an Indian radical— a “filthy native,” in his estimation.

“Look at it!” broke from Parr. “The ring! The devil’s fire!”

Balfour held up his hand; the black stone of the ring was fiery crimson.

“Twelve o’clock,” said none of us. “No further orders today, my friends.” The Rajah’s voice, speaking in Hindustani. Then he switched instantly to English.

“Good day, Dr. Clements. Good day, Mr. Balfour. I trust you are making use of that ring you obtained last night? Make the most of it, I admonish you. A message is on the way to you now. That is all.”

The words died out; the ring became black again. I saw Parr looking at me and nodding. Balfour had purpled with anger. Virginia sat tense and white.

“He gives us credit for more ingenuity than we possess,” I observed lightly. “He’s not certain we’ve found the secret of the ring; apparently he has sent you some warning, Balfour. You can still clear out of here.”

“Be damned if I’ll run from him!” snapped Balfour. “Those watchmen haven’t come? No word from Chaffee? Huh! I’ll stay right here, and if he tries any tricks I’ll give him what for! Upon my word— the insufferable impudence of him!”

HE REVERTED to the practical. The police had been trying out a new radio trick— electronic plates fastened to the walls of a room, and radio reception audible between the plates, nowhere else. Something like that might explain the black stone, on whose properties we had accidentally stumbled. I shrugged; anything was possible.

The butler announced luncheon. Almost at the same moment Balfour was called to the telephone; he rejoined us with a sparkle in his eye.

“That was Howard Chaffee,” he announced. “He’s driving down from San Francisco. Said he’d get here sometime this evening. He has important information on our man. Said he saw in the papers about Sir James Trent’s death, and had been at work on the case. Expects a Government man named Aguilar to meet him here tonight. Looks definite, what?”

“Pleasantly so,” I assented cheerfully. “I knew if we got our heads together we’d get results. Aguilar sounds Spanish.”

“Half this town is Spanish, or Mexican, or pretends to be,” sniffed Balfour. “They capitalize it for tourists. Ha! Now I feel better. We can fight back. Chaffee sounded as though he meant business.”

I did not mention that, from the little I knew of him, Chaffee seemed to be an arrant scoundrel. I was by no means particular.

We all relaxed under this cheerful intimation, and the meal became almost merry. The coffee had just arrived when a car drove in, and there were Balfour’s three guards. We interviewed them— hard-eyed, capable men who obviously knew their business. Balfour told them his life had been threatened, and they, with Parr, were to guard the place.

“I sha’n’t stir from it,” he said. “I’ll remain here.”

“Okay,” said one of the three. “That’s the ticket, sir. Now let’s see the servants and look over the place. We’ll answer for your safety if you don’t leave the premises. If any visitors are expected, we want to know about ’em.”

They went off with Parr, and Balfour beamed at us, and returned the silver ring to me.

“I fancy we have that devil blocked now, eh? What are you two going to do for the afternoon? You said you wanted to see the town, Virginia.”

She assented. “I’ve always heard about it and have never seen it. But—”

“Then we’ll do it,” I broke in. “Everything’s safe here. We’ll see the place, do any errands for our host, maybe take in a movie, and get back for dinner and a big evening with Howard Chaffee.”

So, half an hour later, Virginia and I got away for town....

Looking back now at those happenings in Balfour’s house, it is easy to realize what childish fools we all were, and I make no exception of myself. At the moment we seemed pretty smart, covering every avenue of possible danger and of approach by the Rajah from Hell, as we thought. Yet we were the veriest bungling amateurs, neglecting the most simple precautions. Aware of his deadly rapidity of action, we were hypnotized by it, and absolutely forgot the possibility that he might have made slow and careful preparation toward gaining his ends. I had previously guessed that I was watched in all I did by his agents, and paid small importance to it; I was as much to blame as anyone.

For an hour or so I drove about with Virginia, even taking a look at the vast estates in the southern suburb of Montecito. Then we came back into town, parked the car, and she did some shopping on Main Street. Fascinated by the luxury shops, she vetoed any movie, and we wandered rather expensively about the place, until I was loaded with her packages.

We were in a drugstore buying toiletries when she suddenly turned to me.

“Hugh, will you telephone Mr. Balfour? He said to get some Kleenex if I saw any, because he had run out and did not know where to find it. They have a big stock here. Ask if he wants the white or colored, and how much to get.”

There was a phone-booth in sight, so I went to it and called Balfour’s house. The butler responded; I gave my name, and Balfour came to the phone. I put Virginia’s question to him.

“Oh, get three or four packages, any color,” he replied. “And— Clements!”

“Yes?”

“I had a telegram half an hour ago, sent from Los Angeles.” His voice was quite steady. “It was unsigned, but said something would occur within two days.”

“Oh! Sirvath?”

“Obviously. I’m trying to get it traced. Won’t do much good, I fear.”

I hung up thoughtfully. So he had received his warning. The time-limit meant nothing. Lajpat Rai, to give him his true name, might strike at any time. Better not say anything to Virginia about this, I thought, as I pushed open the booth door.

“Ah, Clements! I’d like a word with you— just a word.”

I stood immobile, transfixed. There was Virginia, across the store— and here, within a foot, smiling at me coolly, stood the Rajah from Hell! Hat pulled over his darkly luminous eyes, he wore natty flannels and looked quite at his ease.

“Glad you found Miss Trent unhurt and well,” he said swiftly, as though we were old friends. “I want to emphasize my kindly feelings toward you, Dr. Clements, by asking you to pull out of this Balfour thing— you and her both. It would grieve me if accidents happened.”

“Grieve you?” I repeated. “You and your cheap tricks— see here, you’ll get badly bitten if you keep up this deviltry of yours!”

“As though you or your friends could harm me, or even find me!” he said. “Sorry you’re stubborn about it, but I must admit the reason is charming. Well, I warn you: clear out before evening comes— for her sake. I can’t be answerable otherwise.”

With a nod he turned away; Virginia was coming toward us. My childish outburst had been weak, pitiful. There was nothing I could do— no use in making a scene.

“Lajpat Rai!” I exclaimed. He looked back at me, pausing. “What stone is in that silver ring?”

His white teeth showed in a faint grin.

“An uranium compound, of course! So long.”

I WATCHED HIM out the side door, helpless, unable to think or move. Virginia came to me, smiling.

“Who’s your handsome friend— oh, what’s the matter?”

“Everything,” I said. “That was the Rajah from Hell— and he answered to the name of Lajpat Rai— here, come along to the soda fountain; we can talk there.”

We got a little table, sat down, gave our order; and I told Virginia what Balfour had said, too— no use trying to hold anything back. The drinks came. Virginia was as white as a sheet, but otherwise never turned a hair.

“There was nothing you could do,” she said quietly. “Nothing I could have done either, except to lose my head. Glad I didn’t know who he was. I’ll know him next time.”

“His warnings are to be respected, and this one was well meant. Think you’d better respect it, and leave?”

“No,” she replied. “I can do no good, I know, but I intend to exert every effort to bring him to justice for Father’s murder, Hugh. I think we’re getting somewhere, too. If one of his men can be caught and made to talk, we’ll have him. Balfour has the police after this Ghopal Singh, and Chaffee will give us something important when he comes.... No, I want to wait for developments. Do you blame me?”

I did not, of course. She was the vitally interested party; she was the one to prosecute if Lajpat Rai could be linked with the murder of Sir James Trent. Some attempt on Balfour’s life would be made within two days. It seemed safe enough for her to stick around until morning, anyhow. We might even get our hands on the chief devil himself.

So there was no further argument.

Getting to the car, we drove out to Balfour’s house, getting there about four o’clock, and called Parr and Balfour into consultation. They heard my report of the meeting, and Balfour urged Virginia to accept the warning and leave. She refused flatly.

“Wait till morning, anyhow,” she concluded. “I must hear what Chaffee has to tell us, you know.”

“All right, then.” Balfour shrugged and assented. “So he says the black stone is uranium? Bosh! . . . Where’s the bally thing now, Clements?”

“Lying on my dresser. Want to give Chaffee a demonstration at midnight?”

“We might,” he said. “Hello— what’s this, now?”

“This” proved to be one of the three guards, asking for a hearing.

“We’ve been doing a little checking up, Mr. Balfour,” he said. “Your phone wires come to the garage first, then to the house. Why?”

“Eh? How the devil would I know?” said Balfour. “Ask the telephone people.”

“Well, it’d be a cinch for anyone living in those upstairs garage rooms to tap your wires. All that’s needed is a magneto, or a magnet wrapped magneto style. Who stays up there? The two menservants and the cook, I understand.”

“Correct,” said Balfour. “Both men have been with me for ten years or more. The cook, Mrs. Brown, was employed by my wife three months ago. Local woman. Steady, reliable and a good cook. There’s a phone in the garage, by the way.”

The guard grinned. “That answers my first question, then. Suppose Mrs. Brown was a spy and reporting all that was said on your phone here?”

We looked at one another. “Well, we’d be in the soup,” said Balfour. “I say! I can telephone Mrs. Balfour in Beverly Hills and get this woman’s references, and you can look her up in the morning, eh?”

“I’d say do it now,” replied the guard, “and one of us can look her up tonight. If you’re on a spot, there’s no sense in wasting time. We don’t want her to listen in and get wise, though; she’s in her room now. I’ll go chin with her while you’re on the wire.”

This was good advice; it would have been better a few hours earlier. Thought of what any such spy might have reported to Lajpat Rai via the garage phone was disturbing. Balfour called Long Distance; before he got his wife, the guard came back hotfoot. Mrs. Brown had gone, disappeared— gone for a walk half an hour ago, another guard said. It had not been considered worth while reporting. She had carried only a leather arm-bag.

“With the magneto and wire in it,” said the guard, and went off to search the woman’s room. The search revealed nothing suspicious, but Mrs. Brown did not come back; and this looked bad, but not necessarily suspicious.

There was plenty of food in the house, and Balfour’s two menservants threw a meal together without trouble. Just as we were about to sit down, the telephone summoned our host. He rejoined us, rubbing his hands and chuckling.

“I knew it! I knew the blighter would overstep!” Balfour exclaimed. “They’ve got Ghopal Singh— found him driving a car that’s registered in his own name, and he’s behind the bars now. The chief said I’d better come down this evening when he’s questioned. I’ll go in an hour or so.... Risk? Poppycock! No risk at all.”

Knowing the infernal craft of Lajpat Rai, I was not so sure; however, it was great news, and put us all into an excited dither. At last we had one of the enemy’s men in limbo! A start had been made; the Rajah from Hell was not impervious. It put heart into us all. It has often occurred to me, however, that this lucky stroke of ours may have forced Lajpat Rai to change his plans and get into faster motion....

At any rate, we made a merry meal, seasoned with facile predictions on what the morrow would bring forth. The coffee was being served when again Balfour was summoned to the phone by a long-distance call. Once more he returned joyously, and picked a fat cheroot from the open box on the table before he explained.

“That was Chaffee on the line. He’s at Santa Maria, a town just north of here. Had some tire trouble and was delayed. Hopes to be along here in a couple of hours. He says not to open any fight on our man until we’ve talked with Aguilar— dashed important. By the way, we’ve heard nothing from the fellow, eh?”

“Did he say what branch of Government service this Aguilar was in?” I demanded.

“Eh? Oh, yes— Immigration Service.”

“Then we may have our man nailed. He probably, almost certainly, entered the country under a false name, and with false papers, and Aguilar is laying for him. Lucky thing Chaffee got into this with us.”

“Still, we must catch the wolf,” said Virginia Trent, “before we can skin him.”

Balfour chuckled over his cheroot, but there was an unhappy truth in her words. Laying hands on the Rajah from Hell would not be easy.

Our host, with activity at hand, became a careful general. He meant to be back from police headquarters before Chaffee arrived. He sent Parr to get out his car and to drive him downtown, and called in the three guards.

“No trouble likely tonight,” he said, “and I’ll have a radio car sent to prowl on this road; but keep a sharp eye out just the same. Admit nobody except a man named Aguilar, and another named Chaffee; each will be driving. As soon as I return from downtown, Parr will join you, and you’d best form watches to break up the night. That’s all.”

“What if anyone else shows up?” asked one. “Strangers?”

“Detain them,” Balfour directed. “That’s what you’re here for.”

The forces scattered; the car honked; Balfour bade us a cheery farewell and departed with Parr at the wheel. The evening was pitch dark.

I took a look at things outside, and did not envy the guards their job, though they were armed and had flashlights. Balfour had one floodlight that would illumine the garage front; he should have had a dozen to cover the whole house and its approaches. Still, two men should be able to guard the place.

HALF AN HOUR passed. Virginia, at the piano, was playing softly. I finished a cigar and went upstairs. The slight flesh-wound in my thigh was burning a bit, and I decided to put on a fresh dressing. I switched on the lights in my bedroom, and while getting the gauze and adhesive tape, noticed the silver ring with the black stone lying on my dresser. Better take it downstairs when I went, was my thought; Chaffee would want to have a look at it. We might even test it out at midnight.

My room was at the corner of the house overlooking the drive and the approach to the garage. It was warm weather and the windows were open. I mention all these details, not because of their importance, but to counter the allegations that have been made regarding the luck of Lajpat Rai. I do not believe it was luck. I am not so sure there is any such thing as luck, even. I do know that the man went to amazing care, and was swift to take advantage of conditions as they were— and this, for some people, means luck.

I could hear the piano faintly. To change the dressing on my hurt was no great job. I removed my trousers, took off the bandage Parr had applied, and went to the window. I had heard a car drive up, saw a flashlight beam stabbing about down below, and heard voices.

“Who is it?” I demanded. “Is that Mr. Balfour back?”

“It’s a Mr. Aguilar looking for him,” replied one of the guards. Aguilar! So the Government man was here!

“Good,” I rejoined. “I’ll be down in five minutes. Bring him in.”

They never had a chance to bring him in.

I went into the adjoining bathroom to get some iodine, found mercurochrome instead, and carefully dabbed it on the torn flesh; to use that stuff requires attention, because it spills and stains. On top of it I put the cotton, gauze and strips of tape, well fastening the dressing. The whole thing had not taken more than three minutes, if that. I looked approvingly at the result, caught a slight sound, and looked up.

Across the bedroom, the top of my dresser was gushing flame.

I was spellbound by the incredible sight. Flames were rolling and breaking in a wave; and the wave came from that silver ring. It was like a blow-torch, only a hundred times worse. The window curtains had already caught, and fire was bursting up the old-fashioned wooden Venetian blinds. I heard a yell of alarm from outside.

Then I was darting for my trousers. I yanked them on, got bath-towels and went to the flames. It was like fighting blazing gasoline; the towels whipped the flames all over the place and started a dozen more fires— and the damned ring gushed forth fire until the towel knocked it aside and knocked it under the bed. Then the flames really took hold of things.

Chemical of some sort, naturally; we never learned whether some form of radiant energy started the thing, or whether it was spontaneous. The room was a blazing furnace when at length I gave up the useless effort and staggered out into the hall, slamming the door behind me. Virginia was calling frantically at the foot of the stairs; men were shouting outside.

“Get out of the place!” I called to her. “Phone for the fire department!”

Panic had seized me, I admit. Still, I got downstairs and to the phone, and sent the alarm before she could do so. Balfour’s two servants and the guards were already at my room, and opening it up merely spread the blaze. I got Virginia outside, and got my rented car out of the garage. It was the only thing saved.

Naturally, everything else had been crowded out of my head— Aguilar’s arrival and the rest. I was taking the car down the road a bit when Balfour’s car roared up past me on its return. The whole corner of the house was ablaze now, and the ruddy glare showed me the faces of Parr and Balfour very clearly.

I STOPPED the car as quickly as possible and hastened back to the fire. Little time had passed, rapidly as the blaze had gained. Balfour was out of his car, running to Virginia and the guards, who stood out in the road, well away from the heat. The two menservants had rigged a hose and were dousing the garage roof, to which the flames were nearly reaching. Everything at this side of the house was in a full glare of light. As I approached, I caught sight of another car standing just past the house— that in which Aguilar had arrived. Parr joined me, shouting questions above the roar and crackle of the flames, and we hurried on to the group.

I caught one of the guards by the arm. “Where’s that man Aguilar?”

“Gosh, I dunno!” he said, staring around. “He was here a minute ago— back out of the heat somewhere, I guess.”

A distant siren, just then, told of coming help. Balfour strode out from us, shouting something at his two servants. I was watching the flames gush out through the house-wall, and thinking how fantastic and improbable must be my story of the fire’s origin. We had all forgotten any thought of danger to Balfour.

Then it happened. From the road-edge I saw a tiny spurt of reddish flame; the crack of a shot pierced through the flame-crackle. Balfour threw out his arms and pitched forward in the glare of light.

“There he goes!” yelled one of the guards. I saw a running figure in light gray go darting toward the car up the road. The guard had seen it first, and the gun in his hand spat three rapid shots. The figure fell, rolled over, then was up and in the car. Another guard beside me yelled.

“That’s him! That’s Aguilar! Get him!”

But nobody could get him. A driver must have been waiting with the engine going; the car slipped away and leaped into the darkness and was gone. Aguilar— Lajpat Rai had come giving Aguilar’s name, had done his work, had been hit— and was gone. But he had been hit! One of those pursuing bullets had reached him!

Not that this did any good. Just as the fire chief arrived with siren screaming, we dragged Balfour out of the heat, and found him dead, shot through the head.

Firemen arrived, police arrived; water streams blasted into the house and saved half of it, and the garage, from the flames; but Balfour was dead, murdered. Our efforts had accomplished nothing— except, perhaps, to drive Lajpat Rai into this desperately clumsy murder which could not be disguised as being anything else. He must have planned something far more refined and clever. Certainly his get-away was perfect.

Hundreds of cars and a tumultuous crowd poured on the scene. Parr came through it to where Virginia and I were talking with the police chief. He led another man— a slight, inconspicuous little man.

“Here’s Aguilar, Dr. Clements,” he said. “The real one.”

A quiet, small man, saying almost nothing. But he went down to police headquarters with us and sat in on the investigation. Chaffee showed up later, upon his arrival. He was not so old as the others, being in his early fifties; a spry, leathery-faced, hard-eyed man, also with the ability to keep silent, and a bad egg in spite of his money. He was in time to hear everything and put into dry blunt words what the police chief would not say.

“It’s a bust, Dr. Clements,” he murmured to me. “The beggar’s made a bloody fool of us again, and we’re damned well bilked.”

AND THAT was precisely the case. The single fact on record was that Balfour had been shot; by whom, none could say. Nobody had identified the murderer. In fact, the coroner next morning got a verdict from his jury of person or persons unknown. The hunt went out for the person we described as Lajpat Rai— and that was the end of it, practically.

“Not quite, of course,” Aguilar said that afternoon. He, Parr, Chaffee, Virginia and I were in consultation. “He entered the country with false papers, under a false name. That much remains fact, and it sells me chips to sit into the game. That’s a crime. We can’t pin Balfour’s death on him, maybe. We can’t pin Colonel Magruder’s death on him, maybe. But he’s an accessory to the murder of Sir James Trent; do you want to make that charge, Miss Trent?”

“I certainly do,” replied Virginia.

I nodded to her.

Howard Chaffee, who had done very little talking to now, spoke up.

“I haven’t had much chance to gam with you folks, but by all accounts I’m next on the list of this Rajah from Hell, so I’d better take the ball and run with it. I’ve got a place up at Frisco, no family, lots of room, and I aim to give this guy one hell of a fight when he comes along to monkey with me.”

“You’ll probably have a respite,” I said, “since it’s pretty sure he drew a bullet last night and may be laid up temporarily.”

Chaffee nodded. He was a cool, level-headed sort, and while disliking him heartily, I felt he was the right man for us.

“Okay, then, if you folks want to join in, come along,” he offered. “I can use help, yes. Parr wants to get him because of the killing of his master, Colonel Magruder. Miss Trent has her father’s murder in mind. Aguilar has a Government job to handle. You, Dr. Clements, have no direct interest—”

“But I have,” I said, and met Virginia’s eyes for an instant. “Sir James was my friend, and I’m assisting his daughter. Also, I’m the only one of you all who knows the man and can identify him, so that lets me in. Further, I didn’t tell the police the truth about how the fire started last night. The truth would be incredible.”

Then and there, I gave it to them. Told them about the ring, the black stone, what Lajpat Rai had said concerning it, and what I had seen as the fire’s origin.

“Nothing mystical or occult about it,” I concluded. “Nothing fuzzy about my brains either. What I saw, I saw, and I can’t explain it. Take it for what it’s worth.”

There was a silence while they eyed me. Then Aguilar spoke in his soft, quiet way, almost apologetically.

“Electronics happens to be a hobby of mine,” he said. “During the war I was working with the navy on radar, and the many other electronic devices that were invented. What you’ve just said, Dr. Clements, is quite credible. I’d say it’s clear that this man we’re after is an electronics and possibly a radium expert, and therefore dangerous and most interesting in Government eyes. He learned of my expected arrival from the wire-tapping servant and came in my name— impersonating me. I fully intend to wire Washington regarding the issue of a special warrant for his arrest. And for the near future I expect to be located in San Francisco. Do I make myself clear?”

He did, at least to me, for his sidelong glance at Howard Chaffee gave me a hint. He did not entirely like the company he was keeping; nor did I blame him.

“Okay, folks!” Chaffee rose blithely. “I’ll get back up to Frisco. You have my address, so show up as soon as you’re done with the formalities here. We’ll set a trap for Lajpat Rai that will settle him for keeps!”

He little dreamed who would be the victim of his trap— nor did we.

___________________________

7: Harbor Hazard

H. Bedford-Jones

(as by Captain Michael Gallister)

The Blue Book, July 1938.

BILL BRENDAN was head fireman-diver on Fireboat Two; but, a man being what his background makes him, Brendan was more than this.

Everybody in the Los Angeles harbor district knew Gunboat Brendan, the former Navy boxer, seaman gunner and so forth..... The Navy knew him for his work on sunken submarines; the fireboat crew knew him for what he was, and Mother Brendan knew him for what she thought he was. All this was behind his shoulder now, as he sat hulking over his pipe, listening to the police broadcast.

“My gosh, boys!” Taylor, the pilot, whistled softly. “Twenty thousand in currency, and the mugs get away with it! Three of ’em burned down by the cops. The other two steal a parked patrol car—”

He fell silent, listening. The engineer broke out excitedly.

“Hear that? Headed for the harbor district! Reported by an officer at Main and Weford; emptied his gun into the car as it went past, but it kept on.”

Brendan nodded soberly, cocking an eye at the window of the pier office.

“Aint so good. Heavy fog-bank rolling up out o’ the west basin tonight,” he observed. “Good night for some drunk to hit Suicide Curve, too.”

The police broadcast ended. There was brisk discussion of that stolen police car bearing two thugs and a small fortune, headed now for the harbor. Here at its berth, however, Fireboat Two was in no position to see any possible fun. Suicide Curve, eh?

“That’s right,” said Taylor solemnly. “About time for another one. Eleven year’t I been here, we’ve fished out sixty-four cars. Harbor Commission’s been eleven year waiting to put up stop warnings at those open dead-end streets between the piers. People heading for the ferry terminal in a fog like this had better not be in a rush.”

“Remember the family we fished out last winter?” growled Brendan. “That guy was just plain lost. Riles me up whenever I think o’ them little tykes drowned, on account of the Harbor Commission saving money. I’d like to be a politician for about ten days.”

“You’d make a hot one, all right,” jeered the engineer. “You and your—Holy mackerel, listen to that! Talk of the devil, and up he comes!”

The alarm was shrilling. One and all were in motion instantly. A car off the foot of Berth 187, came the shout. A watchman had heard it go off, but knew no details; his alarm had been relayed from headquarters.

Already Fireboat Two was like a swarming beehive. Twenty firemen were loading equipment on the boat’s stern, working with precise rapidity. Every instant counted, for there was always the chance of pulling somebody up alive. Not much hope of it tonight, however. This blanketing fog would keep them from getting there in time.

“Hop to it, you lardos!” shouted Captain Lawrence. “Get those chests over. Mike and Johnny, over with the diving ladder. The pump— lower away there!”

Seventy-one seconds after the alarm shrilled, they had the equipment stowed on the wide, flat stern.

Captain Lawrence shot his orders at Duke Dumas, the master-diver.

“Duke! Get Howard dressed for the first dive; slap a suit on Brendan for a stand-by, as usual. Move, you sleepwalkers! This is no pleasure cruise—”

The Captain ran forward to where Taylor hung out of the wheel-house, whistle-cord in hand, all three annunciators on stand-by. His voice roared:

“All right, all right, men, let’s roll! Berth 187. Give her the gun— a car’s down. Come on, what’s holding us?”

Pilot Taylor tooted the cast-off signal. These skippers were all alike, he grumbled audibly; thought a pilot could go speeding upchannel in a pea-soup fog at twenty-five knots, like the rescue wagon from Headquarters. They never seemed to realize that the fireboat master had to feel his way against harbor traffic, sounding his signals according to navigation law and regulating his speed by the same.

“The pilot can’t help it,” he growled, “if this makes it impossible to get folks up from cars in time. Cars got no business going overboard anyhow.” He turned to the engine-room tube as the boat, going slow speed ahead on three engines, emerged from the slip. “Five hundred revs a minute, chief. Dead slow all engines. Keep your crew set for four bells and a jingle astern.”

He snapped the speaking-tube shut and took position in the center of the darkened wheel-house, while the Captain cursed softly. “Steer 355 degrees,” he instructed the first mate. “Nothing to the west’ard.”

“Aye,” said the mate, a lean State of Maine mariner. “Three fifty-five and nothing to the west’ard.” Peering into the binnacle, he rolled the wheel to port and starboard and settled on his course.

FIREBOAT TWO headed up the channel. Her air-horn tooted at minute intervals, while the watch up forward strained every sense into the woolly wall of fog that hemmed them in. A voice sounded abruptly:

“Beacon Eight dead ahead, skipper! Hear the foghorn on 175, port bow.”

“Aye,” said Taylor, and changed course at once. Fireboat Two cautiously nosed into Slip Five, and in another minute was alongside Berth 187.

One more minute, and apprentice-diver Howard, in stiff rubber and canvas dress, his domed helmet, hundred-pound waist weights and thirty-pound leaded shoes, was on his way into the pitch-black depths below. Forty feet of water here. An ambulance and a gathering crowd showed on the pier, dimly; so dense was the fog that even the rescue wagon’s red light was no more than a dim blur.

Duke Dumas, the master diver in charge, leaned over the guard-rail, holding the air hose and life-lines. Four men aft at the pump were turning it over with measured beat, keeping the pressure at exactly fifteen pounds. Other men tended coils of life-line and hose, keeping these and the braided telephone-cable free-running at all times.

The fog swirled eerily. The mist deadened all ordinary sound, transforming the moving figures into dim wraiths of gigantic proportions. There was no excitement aboard Fireboat Two. Under the glaring flood-lights the men went about their work quietly, efficiently. Many of them had brought Navy discipline into this job. No undue noise or talk. They were hosemen, firemen, engineers, paid to fight fire and do rescue work ashore and afloat; diving duty for sunken cars was nothing novel to them.

It occasioned far more interest and excitement in the crowd on the pier—police, land firemen, reporters, morbid gawkers, watchmen. Most of them knew the procedure and discussed it as they watched the distorted shapes under the flood-lights.

Usually the first diver located the car in the deep mud, made fast the hook-rope, and signaled topside to break the car out of the swiftly clutching ooze. Then, his diving-time up, he would be hauled to the deck, making his report to the battalion chief in charge. The second, or more experienced diver, would go down to open the car doors, remove the bodies within, then bend on the hook-rope preparatory to hoisting the car.

A SHADOWY FIGURE dropped from the pier to the port side of the deck, where no one was working. Picking his way over the tangle of gear, he slipped forward to the open door of the nozzle-room. Inside on a stool towered a monstrous figure in diving dress, but without the helmet and weights. Brendan was calmly finishing his pipe, awaiting his turn to go down. He glanced up in astonished recognition as the visitor came in.

Runt Welch was a waterfront rat of repute as vicious as his face, twitching that long ratlike nose and staring with blazing eyes that told their own story. Rumored to be a snowbird and dope-peddler, he certainly was not a person Brendan would have expected to see aboard. Welch came in, and with a nod of greeting sat down on an inhalator box.

“Hello, Brendan. Looking for you.”

“Like hell.” Brendan’s scarred, heavy features showed his contempt. “Get out of here before you’re kicked ashore.”

Welch grinned excitedly. Brendan noted the glassy eyes, the pinpoint pupils. He remembered that he himself was practically helpless while encased in this diving-suit.

“No time to gam.” Welch spoke rapidly. “Gunboat, I got a five-thousand-dollar diving-job for you.”

Brendan grunted a disdainful laugh. “I don’t do commercial diving, Runt. Right now, I’m doing a civilian diver out o’ fifty bucks by hooking to this car. Aint fair, maybe, but orders is orders. I hear tell this may be the police wagon stolen after that hold-up job tonight.”

“So it is,” said Welch, his eyes agleam.

“Huh? If you know it is, run along and tell the cops.”

“I’m telling you,” snapped Welch. “I drove that car, see? I was in it. Me and Denver Red. All the others got burned. Then Denver, he got burned on the way when a cop let go at us as we passed him. I come down through the fog, missed the turn and went off the pier. Swum clear to a boat I got waiting, changed my rags, and here I am. Fast work!”

Brendan’s blue eyes were wide.

“My God, if you aint all doped up! Why, you blasted little cockroach—”

“Save it, you big stiff,” spat out Welch. “I got to talk fast. Twenty thousand bucks in a suitcase, see? Pay-roll made up at the bank; we copped it, sure. It’s under the back seat o’ that car, Gunboat. When you go down to hook on to the car, you slip out the suitcase and carry it over to one of the pilings; anchor it. You and me— we’ll get it tomorrow night with my boat. Five grand goes to you.”

Brendan still stared in blank amazement. He knew a dope-fiend when he saw one, and the Runt was obviously all hopped up. The thing was incredible.

“Are you off your nut?” Brendan scowled suddenly. “A cheap rat like you in on a hold-up? Not likely. Chase yourself!”

“Dry up,” snapped Welch, leaning forward intently. “Listen here. Denver Red aint been mugged or printed. He aint got a record, see?”

“What’s it to me?” snarled Brendan angrily. “Get out of here! You and your orders to me— I don’t know if you’re crazy or what.”

“You’ll know damned quick,” shot out the other. “I know who Denver Red was, see? And you’re doing just what I tell you, Gunboat. You get that suitcase out; then you get Denver out and anchor him too. Then we’re all set. Yeah, Denver has told me a lot about you, and about Mother Brendan too.”

Brendan took the pipe from his mouth and set it down. He tried to speak and could not. His massive features were suddenly gray, as comprehension came to him. Welch, at these evidences of agitation, uttered a jeering laugh.

“Got the idea, have you? Hughie Brendan— that’s him, all right. Your kid brother. And if they pull him up in that car, it’s good night! You know what’ll happen, what it’ll mean, when the story breaks in the papers. It’ll dish you and your record. It’ll dish her, too. Denver thought a lot o’ Mother Brendan, he sure did! Now, you big stiff, you’ll do what I tell you. I’ll give you a ring later tonight. So behave.”

He cocked his head, listening; then suddenly rose, darted out into the fog, and was gone. He had heard some one coming on the run.

Brendan sat there in stark misery, sick of heart and soul, his scarred features agonized, his huge fists clenched, his breath coming fast. Hughie, gone to the bad these two years, vanished, lost! And all the while, Mother Brendan had prayed for him every night and morning, certain he would come back. Well, if this rat spoke truth, he had come back!

It was not of himself or his record that Bill thought; this mattered little. It was of Mother Brendan, and what the story would mean to her.

Probably it was not over thirty seconds that he sat thus; yet his brain moved in the span of days and years. Hughie, for one thing; all the ruined wastrel life of the young fellow. And what this news would mean to the old mother. No pleasant prospect.... Then too there was Welch. The rat’s words had unrolled an entire panorama.

A boat waiting here somewhere in the harbor, close by. The pay-roll made up at the bank—yes, all that had come in over the radio broadcast—and Welch acting as driver, probably in charge of the waiting boat and the get-away. Three of the gang shot down. Two away in the stolen police-car, and one of them killed on the mad drive. Welch, going off the dead end in the fog—and below, Hughie Brendan waiting for his brother.

“Come on, Gunboat!” Voices at the door, hasty, excited, jarred through him. “Got to go down. Car’s there, but Howard cut his hand on broken glass and didn’t get inside. The cops think it may be their car, the one the bandits made a get-away with; probably one or two of ’em are inside now.”

Agony, terror, acute horror swept through Gunboat Brendan. Even to move seemed rankly impossible, for his brain was frozen; yet he found himself mechanically rising. Two firemen helped him from the nozzle-room across the deck to another stool. Without a word, he sat while his heavy shoes were laced on.

One of the men was cursing softly; something about volunteer firemen-divers who got no extra pay or merit-marks for going into black depths foul with sunken timbers, cast-off wire hawsers, saw-edged boiler iron and whatnot. Any other time Brendan would have added a curse or two on his own account; but now his mind seemed unable to function. He could only think of Hughie, who had come home again. It was paralyzing.

Lead shoes, lead belt, copper breastplate, then the telephone receivers over his ears. He tested the phones. The helmet was lowered over his head, given a quarter-turn and locked into position. He peered through the glass faceplate, tried his air-valve, tested the exhaust valve, felt for his knife, the wrench, the hanks of light line in his belt; all this done swiftly, automatically.

“O. K.!” he growled to the tender, and clumped down the iron ladder.

No one could tell, thanks to the helmet, that his face was gray and drawn, that his eyes bulged with acute terror behind the thick glass. Had Runt Welch told the truth? There was one way he could be certain. If a suitcase was under the back seat of that car down below, he might be sure the story was true. All sense of sight was ruled out, in the depths. He could see nothing. But the pay-roll suitcase, the same one described in the police radio broadcast, was all the proof he needed.

Groping, Brendan found the car; the touch of it balanced him, heartened him with reality. Here he must work entirely by feel. He got the doors open. He touched the Thing so limply awaiting him, and a sweat of horror bedewed his scarred features. The suitcase was there. The story was true. This limp clay aswing in the water was his brother.

Satisfied of this, he rallied; he knew the worst. Waist-deep in the ooze, he hauled Hughie out. As he lugged the swinging body through the blackness, he could feel the tears on his cheeks. The air hissing through the intake-valve seemed to choke him as he plowed along. Now there was only one thing he could do, and not for his own sake but for that of Mother Brendan. He went grimly ahead with the gruesome, soul-rending job.

For a hundred feet along the wharf, creosoted piling was thrust down into the sand and mud. From his belt Brendan unhooked the light line, cutting off a length with his knife; and by means of this he anchored Hughie to the piling.

He groped his way back to the car and got the heavy suitcase. Back to the piling again; presently he had the suitcase anchored there too. If anything slipped up now, if for any reason a diver came down here tomorrow, he knew full well the implications, and what it would mean to him; but the knowledge did not stagger him. Then he was back at the car again, speaking through the helmet transmitter.

“O. K.! Send down the hook-rope,” he told the tender up above. His voice sounded heavy, hoarse. “Ready to send her up. Tell the Chief I’ve searched the car. Nothing inside except the rear seat cushion floating. No bodies.”

When the rope came down and he hooked on, the job was done.

WHEN THEY brought Brendan up, he leaned heavily on the rail while the tenders unlocked and lifted off the helmet. One look at him, and Duke Dumas spoke anxiously.

“You look sick, big boy. What’s wrong?”

“I’m a bit off. Must have been something I ate for supper,” Brendan replied. “Give me a hand over the rail.”

They helped him to the deck, stripped off the clammy suit, wrapped him in blankets and gave him a slug of brandy. He had the shivers, sure enough; they hustled him into Fireboat Three and sent him back to quarters.

After that, Fireboat Two lifted the sunken car with her winch, the eager reporters and police finding it empty. Then, her work done, the boat went hooting back through the fog to her Terminal Island station.

Brendan was still off his feed when the chief looked in on him, so they bundled him into a car and sent him home. For him, home was the Wilmington bungalow where he lived with Mother Brendan.

Half an hour after he got there, the phone rang. Brendan answered the call. At sound of Welch’s thin and squeaky voice, he shivered again and felt sweat on his face.

“Aye,” he said grimly. “Everything done. Tomorrow night? It’s my shift off; yes.”

He listened. Welch had the boat made ready for the gang; he, the sole survivor, was now heir to all their preparations. He, out of all those five men, alone was living. And Gunboat Brendan knew that he himself must now depend on this cheap crook, this contemptible scoundrel of the waterfront.

“I’ll get everything and send it to the boat, aye,” he said. “You’ve marked the piles, you say? All right, you can depend on me. Will there be fog tomorrow night, you say? Sure. Every night for a week, now.”

So it was settled.

NEXT EVENING, fog was again rolling in past the Point. The battleships inside the breakwater were sounding “At anchor” signals, and the giant bell that some authority had placed near Fireboat Two’s berth was tolling its nerve-shattering warning, its voice fairly shaking the quarters of the boat crew. There would be no sleep for the boys this night.

Gunboat Brendan, on his regular off shift, was ready for the dreaded job. Near midnight, a little fishing-boat left its moorings at the landing near the yacht club, and cautiously felt its way down the channel to Slip Five. In the boat lay a helmet and oxygen jacket Brendan had bought that day from “Suicide” Svenson’s widow. Svenson had lost his life going after a fouled dredge anchor off the new breakwater extension. Brendan figured he could use the outfit himself, later.

“Did you read about the job in the papers?” Brendan asked.

Welch grunted.

“Sure thing. Lucky they blasted them three mugs good and proper; nobody’s left to squeal about me and your brother. Somebody had tipped off the cops and they were all set for the mob.”

“Who did the talking?” Brendan inquired and the other swore viciously.

“I dunno. Monk Hawley had a moll. I dope it that she was sore on him and phoned in a tip to the cops. Can’t tell.”

Brendan sensed suspicion, defiance, distrust, in the manner of Welch, who pointedly kept him beyond arm’s reach. He accepted the situation without argument, intent solely upon what now lay ahead. A man is what his background makes him; Brendan’s one and only thought at the moment was back in the bungalow where, this same night, Mother Brendan prayed for the return of Hughie.

THE FISHING-BOAT crept into Slip Five, with Brendan forward and Welch at the helm. She made fast to the piling where Fireboat Two had lain the previous night. Not a soul moved on the pier, no ship or tug navigated the fog-bound channel. Welch was a long time in finding the particular piles he had marked the night before, but at last he found them, and came down the ladder from the dock platform.

“All set. The watchman’s asleep in his doghouse, as usual. We’re O. K., if some other darn’ fool don’t come along and run his car off. Ready?”

“Yeah,” grunted Brendan. He sent down a shot line to the bottom. Hughie would be there, within a few feet of it. Then he got out the diving jacket and helmet.

“Now, listen,” he said. “It aint so hot working in one of these gadgets at forty feet. If I get fouled, down there, I’m liable to stay with Hughie. You handle your end of the job right, or we’re all sunk together.”

“Shoot, and don’t waste time,” said Welch impatiently. “This fog is cold as hell.”

“So’s the water down below,” Brendan countered grimly. Even in the fog and dark, he suspected from Welch’s position that the smaller man was holding a pistol. “First, I’ll get up my brother’s body. Then, after the suitcase comes up, I want to use this boat. I’ll go out while the fog’s heavy and bury Hughie in deep water off the Point.”

“Sure, sure, you can have the damned boat, and five grand besides,” snarled Welch. He did not move from where he stood. “Get on with the job.”

Brendan indicated the shot line. “See this line? I go down on it, taking the heaving line with me. You hang on to the heaving line from topside. Better come forward and take it now, and keep it running free. In the cockpit it’s apt to get fouled.”

As he spoke, he flaked out the heaving line on the little fo’c’sle. It was dark up forward; the fog was thicker than ever, swirling around him, distorting his figure out of all proportion. The deck was wet and slippery, filmed with fish oil and the grease of years.

Welch peered at him intently but did not move.

“I’m staying here till you go down,” he rejoined decisively. His hand jerked up a bit; Brendan was certain now that he held a gun. “Don’t you try to pull nothing on me, Gunboat. I aint trusting you a whole lot.”

“Oh, don’t be a damned fool—”

Brendan swung around. His feet slipped and went out from under him. He fell with a crash, half against the little wheel-house. A groan escaped him, as he lay in a twisted heap. Welch’s voice shrilled with alarm.

“Hey! What’s the matter with you?”

Brendan moved, tried to claw himself up, and fell back with a subdued oath.

“Can’t make it. Can’t get up. Must have twisted my back. Come here and give me a hand, you rat!”

Welch cursed softly, viciously. “You big lummox, to go hurt yourself at a time like this! You’re pulling something. I got a mind to blast you right now.”

“And bring everybody down on us? You’re no such fool.” Brendan laughed harshly. “Why you damned cokehead, I’m just as anxious as you are to get this done! My kid brother’s down there with the crabs eating on him. I can’t get him buried without your help, and you know it. Come on, damn you, give me a hand!”

“I guess you’re right.” Welch moved forward, reluctantly. “Where you hurt?”

“It’s my back. Jammed against the wheel-house, here; I can’t seem to get on my feet.” Brendan twisted again, and once more relaxed with a low gasp. “Confound it all! If I could just get up on my legs, I’d be all right. This deck’s an inch thick with slime. Come on, get your hands under my shoulders and lift, will you? I’m stuck here.”

His suspicion dissipated, Welch came and stood over the big, helpless figure. He leaned down, got his hands under Brendan’s arms, and pulled. Brendan groaned.

“It hurts, but it helps. Get a better grip, now, and we’ll make it.”

Welch obeyed. His hands well under Brendan’s arms, he stooped to tug upward.

Of a sudden, Brendan’s arms clamped in with tremendous pressure, pinioning Welch’s wrists. A sharp yelp broke from Welch. He lost balance. The gun escaped his fingers. He clutched frantically at Brendan— and yelped again as he fell.

The two figures thrashed confusedly about the little deck, under a swirl of thick fog. Twice more little convulsive yelps broke from Welch, like the squeaks of a cornered rat. Then came a subdued, thudding crash.... Presently Brendan scrambled to his feet.

No alarm. The sleeping watchman had heard nothing. The little boat rocked quietly under the fog. Brendan stooped to feel the limp figure at his feet, and grunted.

“I didn’t go to do that, confound it! No help for it now, though. If his neck broke, he deserved it a dozen times over. And no harm done the world, either.”

He turned calmly to the equipment. He laced on the heavy lead shoes and donned the diving jacket and helmet; this light, shallow-water equipment would do in such a pinch. He made his preparations with unhurried care. Gunboat Brendan always took one thing at a time and made sure it was right before going ahead. No more need to worry about Runt Welch, at least. Now to keep the rendezvous with Hughie; no earthly pay would have tempted him to undertake what he was about to do for love.

Gingerly, he lowered himself down the knotted shot line into the oily water. Never had his huge gnarled paws stood him in better stead than on this night, or done grimmer work. Once in the blackness, acute fear struck him. Never before had he gone down without tenders watching above. Now, if the least thing went wrong in the gripping ooze, he was lost.

Better so, however, than with Runt Welch waiting to kill him, after the suitcase was recovered. He had cherished no illusions regarding that man’s intent.

Even in this moment of gnawing revulsion and fear, he could not repress a grim smile that curled his battered lips like a snarl, and a twisted thought that came into his brain slantwise. Once he had heard a frenetic soapbox orator blaspheming about “God’s jokes.” The phrase crept upon his mind. God’s jokes! Well, this was one, and no mistake. If only Runt Welch had known the truth!

His outstretched hands came upon the floating, anchored Thing, and he shivered....

When he had made fast his lines to corpse and suitcase, he went back topside with the hiss of the oxygen fretting his senses. No tenders, no helpers over the side. Swirls of fog blacker than ever. He might have cast off his heavy weighted shoes, but Brendan was a practical man, and this equipment had value. He felt his way up the line; those big knotted hands of his accomplished the impossible.

At length, trembling with exhaustion, he was aboard. He rid himself of the outfit and lay gathering his forces. Then he rose on the slippery deck and fell to work. The worst of it was over, anyhow.

He brought in the stiff, streaming figure and the suitcase, all its seals intact. From the fo’c’sle of the boat he dragged some old canvas. Impartially, he swathed Welch and the other in this canvas. Before finishing, he secured Welch’s flashlight and stole just one glimpse of the face from the depths. The recognition of Hughie steeled him to all he had done and still must do.

He bound the two wrapped bodies around and around with lobster-pot lines.

At Hughie’s feet he secured the boat’s anchor. Then he lifted the slippery suitcase into the wheel-house, took out his diving-knife, and slit one side of the wet leather. He felt inside and brought out a number of pieces of metal, and flashed the light on them.

“Washers! Washers and junk!” he muttered grimly. “Those cops around the boat, last night, sure told the truth. Lucky thing it never got into the newspapers, or Welch would have seen about it. A decoy suitcase! The holdup had been tipped off, of course. A decoy suitcase, and five men dead because of it! Oh, Hughie boy—”

He checked back his threatening emotion. Lugging the suitcase out again, he made it fast to the limp bundle that was Runt Welch. One of God’s jokes, sure enough, he told himself.

Then, starting the motor, he cast off.

AT THE ENTRANCE of Slip Five, he took his departure from Beacon Eight and headed down the main channel toward the Point. He passed Fireboat Two. The B-platoon boys would be playing cards down below, he knew, trying to dull their senses to the damning toll of the giant fog-bell so close beside. That bell dinned its unending solemn dirge as he thrummed past and away into the fog, heading for Barracuda Flats and the two-hundred-fathom depth that would close the story.

And Mother Brendan would go on with her prayers, in blessed ignorance.

______________________

8: The Gravity Experiment

J. U. Giesy

1877-1947

Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1939

"MEOUW!" The sound was one of feline protestation, a sort of outraged plaint, uttered in the accents of a snarling rage.

"Goodness! Was that Fluffy?" exclaimed Miss Nellie Zapt to her fiancé, Bob Sargent, with whom she was sitting in the dusk, back of the vines on the porch of her father's house.

"Sounded like her voice, at any rate," Bob agreed.

"Meouw! Psst! Zit!"

Nellie started to her feet and stood slenderly poised as a fresh outburst of something suspiciously like inarticulate profanity drifted to her ears. And then she laid hold of her companion.

"Come along, there's something wrong." she urged, and dragged him to his feet.

She darted into the house intent on learning what had evoked the outcries so vociferously emitted by her pet, and Sargent followed very much as he had been following her for something like a year. She was a dainty, glowing creature, and Bob was all tangled up in her feminine charms. So he kept close now as with a tapping of quick little heels on polished wood she entered the living-room of the house via the entrance hall.

And then Nellie paused. She stared at the figure of a small man with spectacles on the bridge of a high, thin nose, and iron-gray whiskers. He stood with back-tilted head, beside a small tin pail deposited on the table in the center of the room.

"Father!" Miss Zapt gasped.

And Sargent also exclaimed. "Good Lord!"

"Eh?" Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, "Unknown Quantity Zapt," as his associates sometimes called him because of the double "X" in his name, the celebrated investigator of the unknown in science, lowered his head and jerked it around in the direction of his daughter's voice. There was the atmosphere about him of a small boy apprehended in some prank. He put out a hand and laid it on the little tin pail. "Did you speak, my dear?" Out of near-sighted blue eyes, he peered at his radiant offspring who had drawn herself up in an indignant fashion.

"I did," said Miss Zapt firmly. "I suppose you're responsible for that?"

She lifted a graceful arm and pointed overhead, as indeed she very well might, considering that she pointed at the wildly gyrating form of a superb Angora cat.

One would hardly expect to find a Persian Angora flattened, with no visible means of support, against the ceiling of a room, as this one certainly was. She hung there threshing with frantic legs at the impalpable air, with a motion not unlike a rather desperate effort at swimming. Then she spun herself about in a circle, marked by a rapidly alternating head, from which gleamed yellow eyes and a twitching bushy tail. Her behavior was little short of hysteria.

"Meouw!" she voiced her troubled state once more as she heard her mistress's voice.

With poor tact Sargent chuckled. "Seems to have got the Angora's angora," he began.

Miss Zapt gave him a withering glance.

"Never mind, Fluffy pet," she called encouragement to the glaring creature that had temporarily given over its efforts and rested with back pressed against the ceiling.

And then she bore down on the little man who had once more lifted his eyes to the animal above him. "I suppose this is another of your detestable experiments," she went on in a voice half tears and half rage. "What have you done to my cat?"

"Nothing, nothing— about the seventy-fifth of an ounce." Professor Zapt fumbled in his pocket for notebook and pencil, opened the former and touched the latter to his lips.

"Father!" Miss Zapt seized both book and pencil. She stamped her foot.

"Eh? Oh, yes, yes— exactly." Xenophon Xerxes glanced into her flushed face. "As a matter of fact I have done nothing to your pet, my child. Nothing at all worth mentioning, that is. Indeed, as you will note I have even exercised extreme caution. I have closed the windows, and the ceiling, of course, prevents her further ascension. But if you refer to her present position—"

"It is rather unusual, don't you think, professor?" said Bob. "Now if she were a flying squirrel—"

"Exactly," Xenophon Zapt cut him short. "The term flying-squirrel is a misnomer, however, Robert. The animal so-called is incapable of sustaining itself for any considerable time in the air. As to the former part of your remark, however, hers is indeed a most unusual position. It is that which proves the complete success of my experiment. You are now witnessing one of the marvels of the ages— voluntary levitation. The rediscovery of one of the lost secrets of the ancients. The means by which—"

Abruptly Nellie caught up the little pail. "I suppose your lost secret's in this?"

And swiftly Xenophon Zapt put out a hand to retrieve what she had seized. "Nellie," he commanded sternly, "replace that receptacle where you found it. As you surmise, it contains a substance of incalculable value. The first practical preparation of Zapt's Repulsive Paste."

"Wha-a-at!" Sargent crossed to gaze into the little bucket his fiancée was holding. "Does look sort of repulsive," he agreed after a glance at the mess in the bottom of the pail. "But— you mean this stuff is responsible for Fluffy's sudden elevation in life?"

"Exactly." Professor Zapt nodded. "The animal is not injured except in her feelings, I assure you. I merely rubbed a very small portion of the paste into the fur on the under side of her body, and she assumed the position you are now privileged to behold. I am sure that in later years you will be glad to recall this evening, to remember that you were the first to witness the reapplication of those principles once before known to our race. You—"

"Just at present," his daughter interrupted, "I'm far more interested in knowing whether, having sent her up there, you intend letting her remain until she starves to death."

"Eh?" Professor Zapt frowned. "Starves? Why, certainly not. Having demonstrated to our satisfaction the efficacy of the latest addition to science, we may consider the test as ended. If Robert will obtain a stepladder from the basement, and you will procure some water in order that we may wash off the paste—"

"Sure," Bob said, and departed on his errand. Nellie went with him as far as the kitchen.

PROFESSOR ZAPT shook his head in depreciative fashion, retrieved his notebook and pencil from the table where Nellie had cast them, and began jotting down certain memoranda. His thin lips moved as his pencil traced its way across a page. "The seventy-fifth part of an ounce," he muttered.

Above his graying head glared a very much disgruntled cat. It was not the first time her mistress's father had made her the subject of some experiment.

Sargent and Nellie reappeared in due season. Bob set up his ladder and mounted to the rescue. Below, Nellie waited with a basin of warm water and a soft cloth in her hands.

"Lay her on her back," Professor Zapt advised as Sargent descended with the Angora clinging desperately to him. "That way she will not present any tendency to rise. The paste does not affect anything beneath it, but merely what is superimposed. That is the secret of its adaptability."

"Exactly," Bob said, grinning, and got down upon his knees.

Nellie knelt beside him. Together they administered to the resentful cat. While Bob held her, Nellie applied water to the body of her pet and dried her fur with the cloth. Fluffy glared, but submitted to superior force.

"Steady," said Bob at last, and turned her over. He removed his restraining hands, and in a flash she vanished through the door into the hall.

Xenophon watched the entire performance, his blue eyes glowing behind their lenses. He nodded as she disappeared. He rubbed his hands together as Bob rose and assisted Nellie to her feet. "A very satisfactory experiment," he declared; "a very satisfactory experiment indeed."

"If you don't let Fluffy alone"— Nellie turned on him— "I'll— I'll pack up and leave home." For years, since her mother's death, she had taken care of the little man's temporal wants and managed the house, but there were times when his complete attention to his scientific pursuits and his lack of attention to everything else, got badly on her nerves. And now her violet eyes were winking, and her red mouth quivered.

"Any time you feel like that, I'll see you have another to go to," Bob suggested as she paused, with a little catch in breath.

"Ahem!" Xenophon Xerxes Zapt glared. He did not approve so wholly of Bob as did his daughter. "Do not make any premature preparations, Robert," he said, after a rather tense interval in which Nellie blushed. "The animal is not injured, as you yourself have seen, and as Nellie will realize in time. The main difficulty against which scientists have to contend in these days of self-interest is the conventional attitude of the average mind.

"Human beings are prone to allow some purely personal view-point to overshadow the major object to be attained. In the present instance it is consideration for a cat. It is permitted to obscure the fact that through her use we have demonstrated the rediscovery of the means by which the Egyptians built the Pyramids."

"What? By Jove!" Sargent opened his eyes in wonder as the point struck home. "You really mean that, professor?"

"Exactly," said Xenophon Zapt benignly, and stroked the graying whiskers on either side of his chin.

"But if that's the case," Bob began quickly, and came to a tonguetied pause.

"It is the case, Robert."

"I know— but—" Sargent floundered. "If it is, why couldn't you have proved it just as well with a book or a rock or a box?"

For an instant the professor's blue eyes twinkled. "I suppose I could have done so, Robert," he replied, "but, as a matter of fact, I took the first object at hand when I was ready to make the test. I— er— that is, I didn't give the matter any further thought.

"My mind was focused on the larger point, the demonstration which proves beyond question that Zapt's Repulsive Paste will revolutionize the commercial world. By means of it we shall be able to accomplish marvels heretofore quite beyond any engineering scope. We shall, by inserting definite quantities of the paste between the object to be transported and the earth, be able to move enormous buildings, nullify the weight of tremendous loads, alter the entire present-day conception as appertaining to weight."

"I don't doubt it," Bob agreed in actually enthusiastic fashion. "Lord, professor, it's simply wonderful when you explain it; and it's already sent Fluffy to the ceiling, and moved Nellie to tears."

"You beast," said Miss Zapt; but she smiled.

Her father frowned. "My chief objection to you, Robert, is the somewhat bizarre sense of humor which induces you to approach matters of weight in a light mood. If you would refrain from undue levity, there are times when I would be inclined to appreciate your otherwise not unintelligent apprehension of the results of scientific investigation."

"I beg your pardon, sir," Bob apologized meekly. "What was it you were saying about the Pyramids?"

"The world has long marveled how they were built, how it was possible to transport and place in their walls monoliths of such enormous size. The answer was suggested some years ago, but never carried further, so far as I am aware. It was reserved for me to prove the truth of that suggestion and give again to the world a substance similar in effect at least to the one they used.

"That substance you have seen in operation tonight. It is in principle a screen for gravitation. Objects above it become for the moment practically devoid of weight; mere trifles light as air."

"You mean it cuts off the operation of gravitation on anything above it?" Bob asked. "Why, that's marvelous, professor."

"Exactly," Xenophon Zapt agreed.

"Dead or alive?"

"Animate or inanimate, as you have seen." The professor rubbed his hands. He eyed the stylish shoes his daughter's fiancé was wearing. "For instance, Robert, I could rub a certain amount on the soles of your shoes, and you would walk a certain distance from the floor. Depending upon the quantity employed in proportion to your weight, you would rise slightly or higher, as the centripetal force of the earth revolutions threw you off.

"The entire action is capable of regulation by means of a calculation based upon the weight of the object to be moved. If I knew your exact weight I could cause you to lose ponderability altogether. I could even make you disappear. Still," he sighed, "I presume Nellie would object to that even more loudly than she protested my use of the cat. However, as a matter of scientific demonstration, it would be interesting, I think."

"Oh, very." Bob drew his modish footwear well under the chair in which he was sitting, and Nellie stiffened.

Xenophon Zapt arose. "I think I shall go to my study now and write a brief account of my experiment. Tomorrow I shall begin the preparation of a large amount of the powder which, blended with water, constitutes the paste. I shall organize a company after a bit. If you wish, Robert, I shall permit you to purchase a reasonable amount of stock. Good night."

"Good night, sir. Thank you," said Bob, and watched him disappear, a quaint little figure in his loose slippers, his iron-gray whiskers and his shapeless, flapping coat.

And after the professor was quite out of sight, Bob turned to Nellie. "Lord! Do you suppose he's really got it?" he remarked. "Something surely happened to Fluffy, and after we washed off the paste she was all right, and— I guess those old wiseacres did know something in their day. It makes a fellow feel funny— Egyptians and Pyramids, and all those old things."

Five minutes later, while Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt drew paper before him and dipped his pen in ink, his daughter and Sargent sat very close together on the living-room couch.

TRUE to his promise, Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt spent the major portion of the succeeding day mixing and blending the ingredients of the powder which, when mixed with water, constituted the Repulsive Paste. He heaped it upon a tray and left it on a table in the upstairs room that he habitually used as the scene of his scientific investigations— a room overlooking, from broad windows, the tree-shaded street.

And the succeeding morning he charged downstairs about ten and informed Nellie that he had nearly overlooked the fact that he meant to attend the meeting of a scientific body to which he belonged in a neighboring town. In considerable haste he arrayed himself in clean shirt and collar, the frock-coat, to which he consistently clung, and hat, and was on the point of departure for a train, when Nellie suggested that he had better wear his shoes, rather than the slippers on his feet. The professor acceding rather impatiently to the suggestion, the change of footgear was made and he departed. After that the day dragged past until-four o'clock.

At that hour Bob Sargent, seated in the office where he dispensed legal advice to sundry clients, answered a ring on his phone.

"Oh, Bobby," came the voice of Miss Zapt; "come up to dinner. Dad's gone to one of his society meetings and he won't be home till rather late, and with all these recent burglaries and hold-ups in the city, I'm sort of nervous."

"Yes, you are," said Sargent with the chuckle, deriding the confession of Miss Zapt's timorous nerves.

"Yes, really, I am," she insisted. "You'll come, won't you, Bob?"

"I will," said Bob without hesitation. And he did.

Because he was in love, and a dinner with his sweetheart tête-à-tête is something no true lover in his senses will pass up. He arrived about six with a box of Nellie's favorite candy and anticipations of a pleasant evening, since Miss Zapt's experience as manager of her father's household had made a dinner under her supervision a thing not to be missed.

In this particular case anticipation proved no more than the precursor of realization. The dinner was a course affair of finely balanced quality, and the two young people rather dallied over it, from soup to cheese, as young people sometimes will, until a sudden deepening of the twilight sent Nellie to the window just as a peal of thunder reverberated sharply through the house.

"Goodness, it's going to rain cats and dogs, Bob!" she exclaimed. "The sky's as black as ink."

"Let 'er rain," said Sargent, content with a well-filled stomach and the society of the lady of his affections. "We've a good roof over our heads, so we should worry."

"I was thinking of father," Nellie explained and giggled as she recounted the professor's attempt to leave home without his shoes. "He's so absent-minded about little things. Mercy!"

A small cyclone seemed sweeping through the house, sending curtains eddying in flapping streamers, and doors banging as they were caught and slammed in the draft.

There followed a few moments of rapid effort in closing windows and making all secure, and then youth and maiden stood briefly watching the first dashing flurry of the summer shower, before they pulled down the shades and withdrew to a low-toned conversation, dealing as usual under similar conditions, quite largely with themselves.

Meanwhile, some distance up the street, a large and heavy-set figure sheltered itself as best it might beneath an arching tree, while waiting for the shower to pass.

It was that of Officer Dan McGuiness, patrolman on the beat that included the Zapt house. It wasn't a very exciting beat as a rule, but recently Danny had been nursing hopes. As Miss Zapt had said to Bob that afternoon, there had been a lot of burglaries of late and Danny really couldn't see why fate should not be kind and send one of the as yet unapprehended prowlers into his quiet street. He was thinking about it now as he listened to the patter of the rain among the leaves.

"Shure it would be a grand noight for a poorch-climber to git in his fancy wuruk," he soliloquized. "Th' wind an' th' rain would cover any noises he might be makin'. 'Tis th' sort of noight I'd consider as made to me order was I a burglar myself."

And the thought having taken hold upon him was with him still, as the shower swept on across the countryside, and the moon appearing, began to flirt with the dripping landscape from behind a veil of ragged clouds. It sent him on down the street with a wary eye for any burglarious-minded individual who might have been of the same opinion as himself.

Thus he came in time to a house, with a wide front porch, above which was an open window; and rising over the top of the porch as Danny watched, an object like a human head.

With a heart beginning to beat more quickly, McGuiness drew into the shadow of a tree, and waited. He knew this house as the home of Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, inhabited by the old man and his daughter. That open window and the head rising cautiously over the edge of the porch roof fitted in with the thoughts McGuiness had been entertaining. He thrust his club into its loop and felt for his revolver. He was convinced that at last he had been given his chance to prove himself.

The head kept on rising. It was followed by a crouching body, and a pair of legs. It became the figure of a man crawling on top of the porch toward the open window with the silent caution, of stealth. Once it appeared to hesitate, to slip on the slanting surface, and then it again went on.

OFFICER McGUINESS had seen enough. He drew his gun and started at a heavy run for the gate in the fence before the house. And having reached it, he slipped through it without sound. He did not follow the walk, but tiptoed with burly caution over the dampened lawn, made his way quite close to the porch. Then and then only did he lift his voice in a heavy, authoritative summons:

"Coom out of ut, me poorch-climbin' beauty. What are ye doin' up there?"

For a moment the figure above him went flat. The flirtatious moon peeped out long enough to reveal it sprawled on the rain-soaked shingles. And then, in most surprising fashion, it floated straight up into the air!

Danny McGuiness stared. Little by little while his breath came harshly, he tilted back his head to observe that most amazing ascent of a human body without apparent means or visible cause.

The man was swimming up as one might swim in water, to judge by the frantic threshing of his arms and legs. But— Danny had never heard of anyone's swimming in the air.

His eyes popped and his jaw dropped as his intended prisoner mounted twenty, fifty, seventy feet and paused, seemingly unable to go any higher. The policeman removed his helmet and scratched his head. The thing was beyond all precedent of experience, a defiance of natural law. A criminal accosted might vault a fence, or climb a wall, or even scale a building in an effort at escape; but to drop on his face and bounce into the air— and —stay there like a— like a kite! Danny put some of his bewilderment into a baffled mutter.

"He went up," he mumbled. "I ask, is ut a man, or a flea or a flyin' fish, devil take 'im. Coom down, I says, an' instead of realizin' th' disadvantages of his position, he rose straight up like a airyplane an' there he is."

And then remembering the dignity of the law and his own standing as a representative of its force, he addressed the figure above him: "Well, that's enough now. Yer quite a burd to judge by yer actions, but— come on down out of that, and light."

Above him the figure was still undergoing contortions beneath the moon and the broken clouds. As he spoke it rolled half-way over and started like a plummet for the earth. Out of it there broke a strangled exclamation of sheer instinctive terror. By a wild effort it again reversed its position and once more shot aloft.

"Up an' down," said Officer McGuiness. "Ye've foine control an' quite a lot of speed, an' that was a grand exhibition. But finish th' trip next time. I've seen enough of yer tricks."

There followed a breathless interval and then a gasping response, "I c-a-a-a-an't!"

"Huh?" Officer McGuiness began to feel the least bit annoyed. He began to entertain a suspicion that this night-hawk was making sport of a member of the police. At the least he was denying what Danny had actually seen with his own good eyes. "Ye can't, can't ye?" he remarked at length. "Well, th' way ut looked to me, ye started out all right."

"Yes, an' if I'd a kept on, you dub, I'd a broke my neck."

"Shmall loss an' ye'd had," said Danny, his anger rising at the other man's form of address. "An' 'tis not all noight I hov to stand here watchin' ye act like a bloomin' bat."

"Who's actin'?" It was a snarl that answered. "If you think I'm doin' this for my health, you got even less sense than th' average cop. I tell you—"

"That's enough. You don't need to tell me nuthin'." Officer McGuiness's outraged dignity came to his aid. "You're under arrest."

"Oh, am I?" Apparently the man in the air was inclined to dispute the patrolman.

"Ye are." Danny stood by his statement none the less.

"Then why don't you come up and get me?"

"Because I ain't no rubber ball." It was a taunt and nothing else, and Danny knew it, but he didn't know exactly what to do about it. He shifted his position, moving in until he stood close beside the porch.

It was a most amazing situation. He might call the fire department and get the extension-tower, but that would ruin the professor's lawn. He might shoot the defiant captive, and yet he doubted if such action on his part would be considered as justified. There might be a question as to whether or no a man's floating up in the air constituted resisting arrest.

He had been taught that an officer should always keep cool. Only it was hard to keep cool in the face of such an amazing situation. Once more he scratched his head and eyed the figure between himself and the moon. The odd thing was the fellow didn't go any higher or even try to swim off. That was another thing that Danny couldn't understand. In fact, he couldn't understand anything that had happened during the last fifteen minutes. The whole thing was a bit too much for his brain.

"How do you do ut?" he asked at length.

"I don't do it, you square-head." The flying man disclaimed all hint at a personal prowess.

"Oh, don't you?" A fine scorn crept into Danny's tones. "Then I should loike to know who does."

"I don't know, dang it," gibbered the other's voice. "You started it yourself, comin' up on me like you did. There was something on the roof, I tell you. I laid down in it when you yelled at me. I felt it, it was sticky. I got it on my clothes—"

"On th' roof?" Danny interrupted with a flash of understanding. He knew considerable about Xenophon Zapt. He had even been mixed up once or twice in his experiments, quite outside his own intent.

"Yes. It stuck to me when I laid down, an' it's keepin' me up here, I guess. If I lay on my face I'm all right, but I start fallin' as soon as I turn on my back. Here's some of the danged stuff, if you want a closer look." Something whistled through the air and hit the spot where Danny had been standing.

But Danny wasn't there. As the other man spoke he had ducked and stepped aside. And straightway he became conscious of two things at once. The man had sunk a trifle nearer the earth after throwing down whatever it was he had scraped from his clothing, and— there was something the matter with his, Officer McGuiness's foot.

It was exhibiting a most remarkable inclination to rise into the air despite Danny's efforts to keep it on the ground. It was throwing him off his balance. Instinctively he hopped sidewise to save himself from falling, landed his one sane foot in what might have been a mass of soft mud on the grass under the eaves of the porch, and became aware that it also had gone wild.

AT ONCE Officer Dan McGuiness found himself in a most bewildering case. He had large feet, powerful, tireless in the path of duty, and the soles of his shoes were of a large expanse. Yet, strangely enough now, those heavy feet seemed to have taken on a quality positively airy. Strive as he would, they refused to remain on the grass. In desperation he tried a step and found himself unable to thrust either leg or foot downward to a contact with the earth. Still struggling against belief he repeated the endeavor with the other foot and found himself mounting to the level of the porch roof. Then and then only did realization and acceptance of the situation come upon him.

"Whu-roo!" He gave vent to a full-toned Irish shout of comprehension and continued his progress aloft.

Inside the house as that shout woke the echoes of the night, Miss Zapt pricked her pretty ears. "Bob," she said sharply, "what was that?"

"Sounded like a yell or a battle-cry or something," Sargent made answer. "I've had a notion I heard voices outside for the past few minutes. Maybe I'd better find out."

He rose, and Nellie followed him into the hall. He opened the door and they both stepped out on the porch.

At first they saw nothing, and then a gruff voice drifted to them: "Lie shtill, ye spalpeen. Ye tould me to come an' git ye an', begob, I hov. Quit yer squirmin' or I'll bust yer bean wid me club."

"Bob!" Miss Zapt seized her companion's arm. She had recognized those stentorian tones: "That's Officer McGuiness. They— they must be on the roof."

"Probably." Sargent went down the porch steps before he lifted his eyes, and then he, too, gasped at what he beheld and his voice came a bit unsteady. "Good Lord, Nellie! Look at that!"

He lifted an arm and pointed to where Danny, treading air very much as a man treads water, was endeavoring to still the struggles of a human figure sprawled out weirdly with its face to the earth.

Miss Zapt took one glance at the spectacle above her and shrieked: "Bob—they'll be killed!"

There came the click of the gate and a little man with iron-gray whiskers and a flapping frock-coat came up the walk.

"Ahem," he said rather dryly, "just what is the meaning of so excitable a statement? Who will be killed, may I ask?"

"Officer McGuiness and— somebody else," Nellie stammered.

"Eh?" Professor Zapt stared, out of his near-sighted eyes. "Indeed? I fail to perceive any indications of an impending tragedy myself. Where are they?"

"There!" Once more Sargent pointed aloft.

"Huh?" The professor tilted back his head as Bob's arm rose. "Bless my soul!" he exclaimed and stared for at least fifteen seconds before he raised his voice in a question: "Officer McGuiness, exactly how did you get up there?"

Danny may have sensed the presence of those beneath him, but if so he had thus far given no sign. Now, however, he managed to snap the handcuffs on his man, tilted his head and shot a glance at the earth.

"An' is ut you, professor?" he replied. "Shure, an' if it is how I got up here yer askin' why I walked, though barrin' th' fact how I done ut I dunno, except that this poorch-climbin' beauty floated offen yer roof when I told him to come down, I stepped into somethin' on th' grass. An' then I found mesilf endowed wid th' ability of follerin' after, belike because of whativer it was I had got on me fate. An' 'tis not so much how I got up is troublin' me now, as how I shall git down wid th' burd I've caught."

"Remarkable— actually remarkable!" said Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt. "Officer, this is most amazing. Let me think— let me think." He made his way to the porch steps and found himself a seat.

"If I moight be suggesting sor, don't be thinkin' too long at present." Danny's voice came down in the tone of a plaint. "'Tis tiresome work entirely, this walkin' on air. 'Tis not an angel I am as yet, an' there is nothin' to sit on at all, at all, an' th' steady movement is tirin' on th' legs."

"Then stop it," said the other in a manner of impatience. "Keep your feet still and float." He began pulling at his graying whiskers as though minded to tear them out by the roots. Presently he hopped up, trotted a few steps down the walk, lifted his eyes to the laboratory windows and nodded. And then he turned to Bob and Nellie. "Did it rain here tonight?"

"It did," Bob declared.

"Wind— preceding the shower?"

"Lots of it at first."

"That explains it," said Xenophon Xerxes Zapt.

"Glad of it—" Bob began.

The professor gave him a glance. "If you will kindly let me finish my remarks. As I told you I would, I prepared a quantity of the Paste Powder the other day and left it when I departed this morning to catch a train. In my haste I forgot to close the windows. The wind blew the powder upon the roof and the rain converted it into the paste and washed some of it off on the lawn—"

"If yer quite done thinkin', professor, sor," Officer McGuiness interrupted, "would you moind tellin' me how to get down?"

"Eh?" Xenophon Zapt jerked up his head to view the patrolman and his captive. "Oh, yes— yes— certainly. That's simple. You have the substance merely on your feet?"

"Yes, sor."

"Then hold them up."

"Hould thim up? Hould thim up where?" Danny's tone was growing a trifle excited. "If I try houldin' up my fate, I'll be losin' my balance and breakin' my—"

"Exactly." Professor Zapt's voice grew crisp. "Take hold of your prisoner, bend your legs at the knees, so as to elevate the soles of your shoes and let gravity do the rest. Robert, go turn on the hose that we may wash the paste off the officer's feet when he reaches the ground. He's all mussed up."

Bob departed, running, on his errand. By the time he was back Danny had effected a landing and was kneeling on the grass with his captive stretched out on his back within reach.

WITHIN five minutes the paste was removed from McGuiness's feet and he stood erect.

"Shure, an' 'tis wonderful stuff, professor," he began after he had taken a deep breath of relief. "An' what moight you call th' same?"

"Zapt's Repulsive Paste," said the professor. "It robs anybody above it of weight."

"What do ye think of that now?" Officer Dan exclaimed. "But 'tis no more than th' truth yer spakin'. I've had an example of its effects myself. Oh, would ye!"

He broke off and sprang, snatching into the air to grip and drag back the form of his prisoner, who in the momentary distraction of conversation had managed to roll himself on his face.

Danny slammed him down none too gently, it must be confessed. "Lie there now, ye human balloon," he admonished in a growl, "or I'll make ye more repulsive than any kind of paste ye ever saw. If ye think I'm going to let Spur Heel Eddie slip out of my fingers, once they grip him—"

"Spur Heel Eddie?" Sargent repeated in excitement. "McGuiness, is that right?"

"Roight ut is— dead roight, Mister Sargent," Danny chuckled. "Shure, an 'tis a foine noight's wuruk. He's the burd we've been sort of thinkin' was behindt all these here burglaries happenin' th' last two weeks."

"And you caught him trying to burglarize my house." Professor Zapt's fingers slipped inside his coat. They came out with something crisp. "Officer, let me express my appreciation of your fidelity to duty."

"Thank ye, sor." Danny deftly pocketed the "appreciation" without removing his watchful eye from Eddie, "As I was sayin', McGuiness niver shirks his duty, an' 'tis a foine noight's wuruk."

"I'll go in and telephone for the wagon," suggested Bob.

"Don't trouble, sor," said Danny. "Begorra, I'll be takin' him in myself."

Stooping, he rolled Eddie face downward, seized him securely by the slack of the trousers and started to walk with him across the grass.

"Ye'll notice that wi'd all this Repulsive Paste smeared on him, if I carry him loike this he hasn't any weight at all," he announced from the gate.

"Exactly. You're a man of intelligence, McGuiness." Xenophon Xerxes Zapt turned to enter his house. "Good night."

"Good night, sor," Officer McGuiness made answer.

"Good night," Bob echoed with a chuckle as he watched Eddie, literally held fast by the strong arm of the law, borne off down the tree-shaded street until he disappeared.

Professor Zapt whirled upon him. "The occasion is not one of levity, Robert," he remarked in decidedly acid tones.

"No, sir. Merely of levitation," said Bob.

___________________

Francis Flagg's first sf story

9: The Machine Man of Ardathia

Francis Flagg

Amazing Stories, November 1927

I DO NOT KNOW what to believe. Sometimes, I am positive I dreamed it all. But, then, there is the matter of the heavy rocking-chair. That, undeniably, did disappear. Perhaps someone played a trick on me; but who would stoop to a deception so bizarre, merely for the purpose of befuddling the wits of an old man? Perhaps someone stole the rocking-chair; but why should anyone want to steal it? It was, it is true, a sturdy piece of furniture, but hardly valuable enough to excite the cupidity of a thief. Besides, it was in its place when I sat down in the easy-chair.

Of course, I may be lying. Peters, to whom I was misguided enough to tell everything on the night of its occurrence, wrote the story for his paper, and the editor says as much in his editorial when he remarks: “Mr. Matthews seems to possess an imagination equal to that of an H. G. Wells.” And, considering the nature of my story I am quite ready to forgive him for doubting my veracity.

However, the few friends who know me better think that I had dined a little too wisely or too well, and was visited with a nightmare. Hodge suggested that the Jap who cleans my rooms had, for some reason, removed the rocking chair from its place, and that I merely took its presence for granted when I sat down in the other; but the Jap strenuously denies having done so.

I must explain that I have two rooms and a bath on the third floor of a modern apartment house fronting the Lake. Since my wife’s death three years ago, I have lived thus, taking my breakfast and lunch at a restaurant, and my dinners, generally, at the club. I also have a room in a down-town office building where I spend a few hours every day working on my book, which is intended to be a critical analysis of the fallacies inherent in the Marxian theory of economics, embracing at the same time a thorough refutation of Lewis Morgan’s Ancient Society. A rather ambitious undertaking, you will admit, and one not apt to engage the interest of a person given to inventing wild yards for the purpose of amazing his friends.

No; I emphatically deny having invented the story. However, the future will speak for itself. I will merely proceed to put the details of my strange experience on paper— justice to myself demands that I should do so, so many garbled accounts have appeared in the press— and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.

Contrary to my usual custom, I had dined that evening with Hodge at the Hotel Oaks. Let me emphatically state that, while it is well-known among his intimates that Hodge has a decided taste for liquor, I had absolutely nothing of an intoxicating nature to drink, and Hodge will verify this. About eight-thirty, I refused an invitation to attend the theatre with him, and went to my rooms. There I changed into smoking-jacket and slippers, and lit a mild Havana.

The rocking-chair was occupying its accustomed place near the centre of the sitting-room floor. I remember that clearly because, as usual, I had either to push it aside or step around it, wondering for the thousandth time, as I did so, why that idiotic Jap persisted in placing it in such an inconvenient spot, and resolving, also for the thousandth time to speak to him about it. With a note-book and pencil placed on the stand beside me, and a copy of Frederick Engel’s Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State, I turned on the light in my green-shaded reading lamp, switched off all the others, and sank with a sigh of relief into the easy-chair.

It was my intention to make a few notes from Engels’ work relative to plural marriages, showing that he contradicted certain conclusions of Morgan’s, but after a few minutes’ work, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. I did not doze; I am positive of that. My mind was actively engaged in trying to piece together a sentence that would clearly express my thoughts.

I can best describe what happened, then, by saying there was an explosion. It wasn’t that, exactly; but, at the time, it seemed to me there must have been an explosion. A blinding flash of light registered with appalling vividness, through the closed lids, on the retina of my eyes. My first thought was that someone had dynamited the building; my second, that the electric fuses had blown out. It was some time before I could see clearly. When I could:

“Good Lord!” I whispered weakly. “What’s that?”

Occupying the space where the rocking-chair had stood (though I did not notice its absence at the time) was a cylinder of what appeared to be glass, standing, I should judge, above five feet high. Encased in this cylinder was what seemed to be a caricature of a man— or a child. I say caricature because, while the cylinder was all of five feet in height, the being inside of it was hardly three; and you can imagine my amazement while I stared at this apparition. After a while, I got up and switched on all the lights, to better observe it.

You may wonder why I did not try to call someone in, but that never occurred to me. In spite of my age —I am sixty— my nerves are steady, and I am not easily frightened. I walked very carefully around the cylinder, and viewed the creature inside from all angles. It was sustained in the centre, midway between top and bottom, by what appeared to be an intricate arrangement of glass and metal tubes. These tubes seemed to run at places into the body; and I noticed some sort of dark fluid circulating through the glass tubes.

The head was very large and hairless; it had bulging brows, and no ears. The eyes were large and winkless, the nose well defined; but the lower part of the face and mouth ran into the small, round body with no sign of a chin. Its legs hung down, skinny, flabby; and the arms were more like short tentacles reaching down from where the head and body joined. The thing was, of course, naked.

I drew the easy-chair up to the cylinder, and sat down facing it Several times I stretched out my hand in an effort to touch its surface, but some force prevented my fingers from making contact, which was very curious. Also, I could detect no movement of the body or limbs of the weird thing inside the glass.

“What I would like to know,” I muttered, “is what you are and where you come from; are you alive, and am I dreaming or am I awake?”

Suddenly, the creature came to life. One of its tentacle-like hands, holding a metal tube, darted to its mouth. From the tube shot a white streak, which fastened itself to the cylinder.

“Ah!” came a clear, metallic voice. “English, Primitive; probably of the twentieth century.” The words were uttered with an indescribable intonation, much as if a foreigner were speaking our language. Yet, more than that, as if he were speaking a language long dead. I don’t know why that thought should have occurred to me, then. Perhaps…

“So you can talk!” I exclaimed.

The creature gave a metallic chuckle. “As you say, I can talk.”

“Then tell me what you are.”

“I am an Ardathian— a Machine-Man of Ardathia. And you…? Tell me, is that really hair on your head?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“And those coverings you wear on your body, are they clothes?’

I answered in the affirmative.

“How odd! Then you really are a Primitive; a Prehistoric Man,” The eyes behind the glass shield regarded me intently.

“A prehistoric man!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are one of that race of early men whose skeletons we have dug up, here and there, and reconstructed for our Schools of Biology. Marvellous how our scientists have copied you from some fragments of bone! The small head covered with hair, the beast-like jaw, the abnormally large body and legs, the artificial coverings made of cloth… even your language!”

For the first time, I began to suspect that I was the victim of a hoax. I got up again and walked carefully around the cylinder, but could detect no outside agency controlling the contraption. Besides, it was absurd to think that anyone would go to the trouble of constructing such a complicated apparatus as this appeared to be, merely for the sake of a practical joke. Nevertheless, I looked out on the landing. Seeing nobody, I came back and resumed my seat in front of the cylinder.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but you referred to me as belonging to a period much more remote than yours.”

“That is correct. If I am not mistaken in my calculations, you are thirty thousand years in the past. What date is this?”

“June 5th, 1939,” I replied, feebly. The creature went through some contortions, sorted a few metal tubes with its hands, and then announced in its metallic voice:

“Computed in terms of your method of reckoning, I have travelled back through time exactly twenty-eight thousand years, nine months, three weeks, two days, seven hours, and a certain number of minutes and seconds which it is useless for me to enumerate exactly.”

It was at this point that I endeavoured to make sure I was wide awake and in full possession of my faculties. I got up, selected a fresh cigar from the humidor, struck a light, and began puffing away. After a few puffs, I laid it beside the one I had been smoking earlier in the evening. I found it there, later. Incontestable proof…..

I said that I am a man of steady nerves. Once more I sat down in front of the cylinder, determined this time to find out what I could about the incredible creature within.

“You say you have travelled back through time thousands of years. How is that possible?” I demanded.

“By verifying time as a fourth dimension, and perfecting devices for travelling in it.”

“In what manner?”

“I do not know whether I can explain it exactly, in your language, and you are too primitive and unevolved to understand mine. However, I shall try. Know, then, that space is as much a relative thing as time. In itself, aside from its relation to matter, it has no existence. You can neither see nor touch it, yet you move freely in space. Is that clear?”

“It sounds like Einstein’s theory.”

“Einstein?”

“One of our great scientists and mathematicians,” I explained.

“So you have scientists and mathematicians? Wonderful! That bears out what Hoomi says. I must! remember to tell… However, to resume my explanation. Time is apprehended in the same manner as is space— that is, in its relation to matter. When you measure space, you do so by letting your measuring rod leap from point to point of matter; or, in the case of spanning the void, let us say, from the Earth to Venus, you start and end with matter, remarking that between lies so many miles of space.

“But it is clear that you see and touch no space, merely spanning the distance between two points of matter with the vision or the measuring rod. You do the same when you compute time with the Sun, or by means of the clock which I see hanging on the wall there, Time, then, is no more of an abstraction than is space. If it is possible for man to move freely in space, it is possible for him to move freely in time, and we Ardathians are beginning to do so.”

“But how?”

“I am afraid your limited intelligence could not grasp that. You must realise that compared with us, you are hardly as much as human. When I look at you, I perceive that your body is enormously larger than your head. This means that you are dominated by animal passions, and that your mental capacity is not very high.”

That this weirdly humorous thing inside a glass cylinder should come to such a conclusion regarding me, made me smile.

“If any of my fellow citizens should see you,” I replied, “they would consider you— well, absurd.”

“That is because they would judge me by the only standard they know— themselves. In Ardathia, you would be regarded as bestial; in fact, that is exactly how your reconstructed skeletons are regarded. Tell me, is it true that you nourish your bodies by taking food through your mouths into your stomachs?”

“Yes.”

“And are still at that stage of bodily evolution when you eliminate the waste products through the alimentary canal?”

I lowered my head.

“How revolting.”

The unwinking eyes regarded me intently. Then something happened which startled me greatly. The creature raised a glass tube to its face, and from the end of the tube leaped a purple ray which came through the glass casing and played over the room.

“There is no need to be alarmed,” said the metallic voice. “I was merely viewing your habitat, and making some deductions. Correct me if I am wrong, please. You are an English-speaking man of the twentieth century. You and your kind live in cities and houses. You eat, digest, and reproduce your young, much as do the animals from which you have sprung. You use crude machines, and have an elementary understanding of physics and chemistry. Correct me if I am wrong, please.”

“You are right, to a certain extent,” I replied. “But I am not interested in having you tell me what I am; I know that. I wish to know what you are. You claim to have come from thirty thousand years in the future, but you advance no evidence to support the claim. How do I know you are not a trick, a fake, an hallucination of mine? You say you can move freely in time. Then how is it you have never come this way before? Tell me something about yourself; I am curious.”

“Your questions are well put,” replied the voice, “and I shall seek to answer them. It is true that we Machine-Men of Ardathia are beginning to move in time as well as in space, but note that I say beginning. Our Time Machines are very crude, as yet, and I am the first Ardathian to penetrate the past beyond a period of six thousand years. You must realise that a time traveller runs certain hazards. At any place on the road, he may materialise inside of a solid of some sort. In that case, he is almost certain to be destroyed.

“Such was the constant danger until I perfected my enveloping ray. I cannot name or describe it in your tongue, but if you approach me too closely, you will feel its resistance. This ray has the effect of disintegrating and dispersing any body of matter inside which a time traveller may materialise. Perhaps you were aware of a great light when I appeared in your room? I probably took shape within a body of matter, and the ray destroyed it.”

“The rocking-chair!” I exclaimed. “It was standing on the spot you now occupy.”

“Then it has been reduced to its original atoms. This is a wonderful moment for me! My ray has proved an unqualified success, for the second time. It not only removes any hindering matter from about the time-traveller, but also creates a void within which he is perfectly safe from harm. But to resume …

“It is hard to believe that we Ardathians evolved from such creatures as you. Our written history does not go back to a time when men nourished themselves by taking food into their stomachs through their mouths, or reproduced their young in the animal-like fashion in which you do. The earliest men of whom we have any records were the Bi-Chanics. They lived about fifteen thousand years before our era, and were already well along the road of mechanical evolution when their civilisation fell.

“The Bi-Chanics vaporised their food substances and breathed them through the nostril, excreting the waste products of the body through the pores of the skin. Their children were brought to the point of birth in ecto-genetic incubators. There is enough authentic evidence to prove that the Bi-Chanics had perfected the use of mechanical hearts, and were crudely able to make…

“I cannot find the words to explain what they made, but it does not matter. The point is that, while they had only partly subordinated machinery to their use, they are the earliest race of human beings of whom we possess any real knowledge, and it was their period of time that I was seeking when I inadvertently came too far and landed in yours.”

The metallic voice ceased for a moment, and I took advantage of the pause to speak. “I do not know a thing about the Bi-Chanics, or whatever it is you call them,” I remarked, “but they were certainly not the first to make mechanical hearts. I remember reading about a Russian scientist who kept a dog alive four hours by means of a motor which pumped the blood through the dog’s body.”

“You mean the motor was used as a heart?”

“Exactly.”

The Ardathian made a quick motion with one of its hands.

“I have made a note of your information; it is very interesting.”

“Furthermore,” I pursued, “I recall reading of how, some years ago, one of our surgeons was hatching out rabbits and guinea pigs in ecto-genetic incubators.”

The Ardathian made another quick gesture with its hand. I could see that my remarks excited it.

“Perhaps,” I said, not without a feeling of satisfaction (for the casual allusion to myself as hardly human had irked my pride), “perhaps you will find it as interesting to visit the people of five hundred years from now, let us say, as you would to visit the Bi-Chanics.”

“I assure you,” replied the metallic voice, “that if I succeed in returning to my native Ardathia, those periods will be thoroughly explored. I can only express surprise at your having advanced as far as you have, and wonder why it is you have made no practical use of your knowledge.”

“Sometimes I wonder myself,” I returned. “But I am very much interested in learning more about yourself and your times. If you would resume your story … ?”

“With pleasure,” replied the Ardathian. “In Ardathia, we do not live in houses or in cities; neither do we nourish ourselves as do you, or as did the Bi-Chanics. The chemical fluid you see circulating through these tubes which ran into and through my body, has taken the place of blood. The fluid is produced by the action of a light-ray on certain life-giving elements in the air. It is constantly being produced in those tubes under my feet, and driven through my body be a mechanism too intricate for me to describe.

“The same fluid circulates through my body only once, nourishing it and gathering all impurities as it goes. Having completed its revolution, it is dissipated by means of another ray which carries it back into the surrounding air. Have you noticed the transparent substance enclosing me?”

“The cylinder of glass, you mean?”

“Glass! What do you mean by glass?”

“Why, that there,” I said, pointing to the window. The Ardathian directed a metal tube at the spot indicated. A purple streak flashed out, hovered a moment on a pane, and then withdrew.

“No,” came the metallic voice; “not that. The cylinder, as you call it, is made of a transparent substance, very strong and practically unbreakable. Nothing can penetrate it but the rays which you see, and the two whose action I have just described, which are invisible.

“We Ardathians, you must understand, are not delivered of the flesh; nor are we introduced into incubators as ova taken from female bodies, as were the Bi-Chanics. Among the Ardathians, there are no males or females. The cell from which we are to develop is created synthetically. It is fertilised by means of a ray, and then put into a cylinder such as you observe surrounding me. As the embryo develops, the various tubes and mechanical devices are introduced into the body by our mechanics, and become an integral part of it.

“When the young Ardathian is born, he does not leave the case in which he has developed. That case— or cylinder, as you call it— protects him from the action of a hostile environment If it were to break and expose him to the elements, he would perish miserably. Do you follow me?”

"Not quite,” I confessed. “You say that you have evolved from men like us, and then go on to state that you are synthetically conceived and machine made. I do not see how this evolution was possible.”

“And you may never understand! Nevertheless, I shall try to explain. Did you not tell me you had wise ones among you who experiment with mechanical hearts and ecto-genetic incubators? Tell me, have you not others engaged in tests tending to show that it is the action of environment, and not the passing of time, which accounts for the ageing of organisms?”

“Well,” I said, hesitatingly, “I have heard tell of chicken’s hearts being kept alive in special containers which protect them from their normal environment.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the metallic voice. “But Hoomi will be astounded when he learns that such experiments were carried on by prehistoric men fifteen thousand years before the Bi-Chanics! Listen closely, for what you have told me provides a starting-point from which you may be able to follow my explanation of man’s evolution from your time to mine.

“Of the thousands of years separating your day from that of the Bi-Chanics, I have no authentic knowledge. My exact knowledge begins with the Bi-Chanics. They were the first to realise that man’s bodily advancement lay in, and through, the machine. They perceived that man only became human when he fashioned tools; that the tools increased the length of his arms, the grip of his hands, the strength of his muscles. They observed that, with the aid of the machine, man could circle the Earth, speak to the planets, gaze intimately at the stars. We will increase our span of life on Earth, said the Bi-Chanics, by throwing the protection of the machine, the thing that the machine produces, around and into our bodies.

“This they did, to the best of their ability, and increased their longevity to an average of about two hundred years. Then came the Tri-Namics. More advanced than the Bi-Chanics, they reasoned that old age was caused, not by the passage of time, but by the action of environment on the matter of which men were composed. It is this reasoning which causes the men of your time to experiment with chicken’s hearts. The Tri-Namics sought to perfect devices for safeguarding the flesh against the wear and tear of its environment They made envelopes— cylinders—in which they attempted to bring embryos to birth, and to rear children; but they met with only partial success.”

“You speak of the Bi-Chanics and of the Tri-Namics,” I said, “as if they were two distinct races of people. Yet you imply that the latter evolved from the former. If the Bi-Chanics’ civilisation fell, did any period of time elapse between that fall and the rise of the Tri-Namics? And how did the latter inherit from their predecessors ?”

“It is because of your language, which I find very crude and inadequate, that I have not already made that clear,” answered the Ardathian. “The Tri-Namics were really a more progressive part of the Bi-Chanics. When I said the civilisation of the latter fell, I did not mean what that implies in your language.

“You must realise that, fifteen thousand years in your future, the race of man was, scientifically speaking, making rapid strides. But it was not always possible for backward or conservative minds to adjust themselves to new discoveries. Minority groups, composed mostly of the young, forged ahead, proposed radical changes, entertained new ideas, and finally culminated in what I have alluded to as the Tri-Namics. Inevitably, in the course of time, the Bi-Chanics died off, and conservative methods with them. That is what I meant when I said their civilisation fell.

“In the same fashion did we follow the Tri-Namics. When the latter succeeded in raising children inside the cylinder, they destroyed themselves. Soon, all children were born in this manner; and in time, the fate of the Bi-Chanics became that of the Tri-Namics leaving behind them the Machine-Men of Ardathia, who differed radically from them in bodily structure, yet were none the less their direct descendants.”

At last, I began to get an inkling of what the Ardathian meant when it alluded to itself as a Machine-Man. The appalling story of man’s final evolution into a controlling centre that directed a mechanical body, awoke something akin to fear in my heart If it were true, what of the soul, the spirit… ? The metallic voice went on.

“You must not imagine that the early Ardathians possessed a cylinder as invulnerable as the one which protects me. The first envelopes of this nature were made of a pliable substance, which wore out within three centuries. But the substance composing the envelope has gradually been improved, perfected, until now it is immune for fifteen hundred years to anything save a powerful explosion or some other major catastrophe.”

“Fifteen hundred years!” I exclaimed.

“Barring accident, that is the length of time an Ardathian lives. But to us, fifteen hundred years is no longer than a hundred would be to you. Remember, please, that time is relative: twelve hours of your time is a second of ours, and a year… But suffice it to say that very few Ardathians live out their allotted span. Since we are constantly engaged in hazardous experiments and dangerous expeditions, accidents are many. Thousands of our brave explorers have plunged into the past and never returned. They probably materialised inside solids, and were annihilated; but I believe I have finally overcome this danger with my disintegrating ray.”

“And how old are you?”

“As you count time, five hundred and seventy years. You must understand that there has been no change in my body since birth. If the cylinder were everlasting, or proof against accident, I should live for ever. It is the wearing out, or breaking up, of the envelope, which exposes us to the dangerous forces of nature and causes death. Some of our scientists are trying to perfect means for building up the cylinder as fast as the wear and tear of environment breaks it down; others are seeking to rear embryos to birth with nothing but rays for covering— rays incapable of harming the organism, yet immune to dissipation by environment and incapable of destruction by explosion. So far, they have been unsuccessful; but I have every confidence in their ultimate triumph. Then we shall be as immortal as the planet on which we live.”

I stared at the cylinder, at the creature inside the cylinder, at the ceiling, the four walls of the room, and then back again at the cylinder, I pinched the soft flesh of my thigh with my fingers. I was awake, all right; there could be no doubt about that.

“Are there any questions you would like to ask?” came the metallic voice.

“Yes,” I said at last, half-fearfully. “What joy can there be in existence for you? You have no sex; you cannot mate. It seems to me—” I hesitated. “It seems to me that no hell could be worse than centuries of being caged alive inside that thing you call an envelope. Now, I have full command of my limbs and can go where I please. I can—”

I came to a breathless stop, awed by the lurid light which suddenly gleamed in the winkless eyes.

“Poor prehistoric mammal,” came the answer, “how could you, groping in the dawn of human existence, comprehend what is beyond your lowly environment! Compared to you, we are as gods. No longer are our loves and hates the reactions of viscera. Our thoughts, out thinking, our emotions, are conditioned, moulded to the extent that we control our immediate environment. There is no such thing as—

“But it is impossible to continue. Your mentality— it is not the word I like to use but, as I have repeatedly said, your language is woefully inadequate— has a restricted range of but a few thousand words: therefore, I cannot explain further. Only the same lack— in a different fashion, of course, and with objects instead of words— hinders the free movement of your limbs. You have command of them, you say. Poor primitive, do you realise how shackled you are with nothing but your hands and feet? You augment them, of course, with a few machines, but they are crude and cumbersome. It is you who are caged alive, and not I. I have broken through the walls of your cage, have shaken off its shackles— have gone free. Behold the command I have of my limbs!”

From an extended tube shot a streak of white, like a funnel, whose radius was great enough to encircle my seated body. I was conscious of being scooped up, and drawn forward, with inconceivable speed. For one breathless moment, I hung suspended against the cylinder itself, the winkless eyes not an inch from my own. In that moment, I had the sensation of being probed, handled. Several times I was revolved, as a man might twirl a stick. Then I was back in the easy-chair again, white and shaken.

“It is true that I never leave the envelope in which I am encased,” continued the metallic voice, “but I have at my command rays which can bring me anything I desire. In Ardathia are machines— it would be useless for me to describe them to you— with which I can walk, fly, move mountains, delve in the earth, investigate the stars, and loose forces of which you have no conception. Those machines are mechanical parts of my body, extensions of my limbs. I take them off and put them on at will. With their help, I can view one continent while busily employed in another, I can make time machines, harness rays, and plunge for thirty thousand years into the past. Let me again illustrate.”

The tentacle-like hand of the Ardathian waved a tube. The five-foot cylinder glowed with an intense light, spun like a top, and so spinning, dissolved into space. Even as I gaped, like one petrified, the cylinder reappeared with the same rapidity. The metallic voice announced:

“I have just been five years into your future.”

“My future!” I exclaimed. “How can that be when I have not lived it yet?”

“But of course you have lived it!”

I stared, bewildered.

“Could I visit my past if you had not lived your future?” the creature persisted.

“I do not understand,” I said, feebly. “It doesn’t seem possible that while I am here, actually in this room, you should be able to travel ahead in time and find cut what I shall be doing in a future I haven’t reached yet.”

“That is because you are unable to grasp intelligently what time is. Think of it as a dimension— a fourth dimension— which stretches like a road ahead and behind you.”

“But even then,” I protested, “I could only be at one place at a given time, on that road, and not where I am and somewhere else in the same second.”

“You are never anywhere at any time,” replied the metallic voice, “save always in the past or the future. But it is useless trying to acquaint you with a simple truth, thirty thousand years ahead of your ability to understand it. As I said, I travelled five years into your future. Men were wrecking this building.”

“Tearing down this place? Nonsense! It was only erected two years ago.”

“Nevertheless, they were tearing it down. I sent forth my visual-ray to locate you. You were in a great room with numerous other men. They were all doing a variety of odd things. There was—”

At that moment came a heavy knock on the door of my room.

“What’s the matter, Matthews?” called a loud voice. “What are you talking about, all this time? Are you sick?”

I uttered an exclamation of annoyance, because I recognised the voice of John Peters, a newspaperman who occupied the apartment next to mine. My first impulse was to tell him I was busy, but the next moment I had a better idea. Here was someone to whom I could show the cylinder, and the creature inside it; someone to bear witness to having seen it, besides myself! I hurried to the door and threw it open.

“Quick!” I said, grasping Peters by the arm and hauling him into the room. “What do you think of that?”

“Think of what?” he demanded.

“Why of that, there,” I began, pointing with my finger, and then stopping short with my mouth wide open; for on the spot where, a few seconds before, the cylinder had stood, there was nothing. The envelope and the Ardathian had disappeared.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The material for this manuscript came into my hands in an odd fashion. About a year after the Press had ceased to print garbled versions of Matthews’ experience, I made the acquaintance of his friend, Hodge, with whom he had dined on that evening. I asked him about Matthews, He said:

“Did you know they’ve put him in an asylum? You didn’t? Well, they have. He’s crazy enough now, poor devil; though he was always a little queer, I thought I went to visit him the other day, and it gave me quite a shock to see him in a ward with a lot of other men, all doing something queer.

“By the way, Peters told me the other day that the apartment house where Matthews lived is to be torn down. They are going to demolish several houses along the Lake Shore, to widen the boulevard; but he says they won’t wreck them for three or four years yet. Funny, eh ? Would you like to see what Matthews wrote about the affair himself?”

_____________________

10: The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds

Francis Flagg

Astounding Jan 1932

TALBOT had been working that day, far up in the Catalinas, looking over some mining prospects for his company, and was returning to the Mountain View Hotel in Oracle when, from the mouth of an abandoned shaft some distance back of that town, he saw a strange object emerge.

“Hello,” he said to Manuel, his young Mexican assistant, “what the devil can that be?”

Manuel crossed himself swiftly.

“Dios!” he exclaimed, “but it is a queer bird, señor.”

Queer, it certainly was, and of a species Talbot had never before laid eyes on. The bird stood on the crumbling rim of the mining shaft and regarded him with golden eyes. Its body was as large as that of a buzzard, and its head had a flat, reptilian look, unpleasant to see. Nor was that the only odd thing. The feathers glittered metallically, like blued copper, and a streak of glistening silver outlined both wings.

Marveling greatly, and deciding that the bird must be some rare kind escaped from a zoo, or a stray from tropical lands much further south, Talbot advanced cautiously, but the bird viewed his approach with unconcern. Ten feet from it he stopped uneasily. The strange fowl’s intent look, its utter immobility, somewhat disconcerted him.

“Look out, señor,” warned Manuel.

Involuntarily, Talbot stepped back. If he had possessed a rifle he would have shot the bird, but neither Manuel nor himself was armed. Suddenly— he had looked away for a moment— the bird was gone. Clutching a short miner’s pick-ax, and a little ashamed of his momentary timidity, he strode to the edge of the abandoned shaft and peered down. There was nothing to see; only rotting joists of wood, crumbling earth for a few feet, and then darkness.

He pondered for a moment. This was the old Wiley claim. He knew it well. The shaft went down for over two hundred feet, and there were several lateral workings, one of which tunneled back into the hills for a considerable distance. The mine had been a bonanza back in the days when Oracle boomed, but the last ore had been taken out in 1905, and for twenty-seven years it had lain deserted. Manuel came up beside him and leaned over.

“What is that?” he questioned.

Talbot heard it himself, a faint rumbling sound, like the rhythmic throb of machinery. Mystified, he gazed blankly at Manuel. Of course it was impossible. What could functioning machinery be doing at the bottom of an abandoned hole in the ground? And where there were no signs of human activity to account for the phenomenon? A more forsaken looking place it would be hard to imagine. Not that the surrounding country wasn’t ruggedly beautiful and grand; the hills were covered with live-oak, yucca grass, chulla, manzanita, and starred with the white blossoms of wild thistle. But this locality was remote from human habitation, and lonely.

Could it be, Talbot wondered, the strange bird making that noise? Or perhaps some animal? The noise sounded like nothing any creature, furred or feathered, could make, but, of course, that must be the explanation. However, it would be dark within the hour, with Oracle still two miles distant, so he turned reluctantly away, Manuel thwacking the burros from the grazing they had found. But that was not to be the end of the odd experience. Just before the trail swung over the next rise, Talbot glanced back. There, perching on the rim of the abandoned mining shaft, were not one but two of the strange birds. As if cognizant of his backward glance, they napped their gleaming, metallic wings, although they did not rise, and gave voice to what could only be their natural harsh cries, measured and, somehow, sinister.

“Toc-toc, toc-toc.”

Talbot went to bed determined to investigate the old Wiley claim the next day, but in the morning an urgent telegram called him and Manuel to Phoenix, and so the matter was necessarily postponed. Moreover, on mature reflection, he decided that there was nothing much to investigate. The days went by, the matter slipped his mind, and he had almost forgotten the incident.

IT was an Indian who first brought news of the jungle to Oracle. His name was John Redpath and he wasn’t the average person’s idea of an Indian at all. He wore store clothes and a wide-brimmed hat, and spoke English with the colloquial ease of one whose native language it was. It was ten o’clock in the morning, the hour when people gathered at the local store and post-office to gossip and get their mail, when he came driving into town in his Ford, his terrified wife and three children crowded into the back seat.

“What’s the matter, John?” asked Silby, the constable.

“Matter?” said Redpath. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter.”

He held the attention of the crowd which now began flocking around him. “You know me, Silby; I’m not easily frightened; but what’s happened at my place has me scared stiff.”

He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

“When we went to bed last night, everything looked as usual; but this morning….”

He paused.

“Something over night had grown up in my pasture. Don’t ask me what it is. The whole hillside was filled with it. I went to the pasture to milk my goats— that’s some distance from the house and over a rise; you know how rugged my land is— and there was the stuff, acres of it, twenty, thirty feet tall, like— like nothing I had ever seen before. And Silby”— his voice was suddenly low— “I could see it growing.”

AT this remarkable statement, everyone in sound of his voice gaped with astonishment. Had it been any other Indian they would have said he was drunk—but not John Redpath. He didn’t drink.

“Growing?” echoed Silby stupidly.

“Yes. The damn stuff was growing. But it wasn’t that which stampeded me out of there. It was the globe.”

“The globe!” said Silby, more mystified than ever.

“It was floating over the growing stuff, like a black balloon. Just over my place the balloon began to sift down a shower of pebbles. Like beans, they were; seeds, rather; for when they hit the ground they started to sprout.”

“Sprout?” The constable was capable of nothing more than an echo.

“I’m telling you the truth,” continued Redpath. “Incredibly fast. I had barely time to crank up the car and get out of there. I never would have done it if the strange growth hadn’t left the way clear from the garage to the road. Silby, I had the devil of a time getting the wife and kids out of the house. When I looked back after going a quarter of a mile the house had disappeared under a tangled mass.”

There was no time for anyone to question John Redpath further. Even as he finished speaking a large automobile dashed up and out tumbled a well-dressed and portly red-faced stranger.

“What the devil’s the matter with the road above here? Funniest thing I ever saw. The road to Mount Lemmon’s blocked. My family,” he said inconsequentially, “is at Mount Lemmon for the summer and I want to get through to them.”

Blocked! The crowd stared at him wonderingly. John Redpath threw in his clutch. “So long,” he said. “I’ve a brother in Tucson, and I’m going to his place until this blows over.”

As he left Oracle, John Redpath noticed several dark globes drifting down on it from the hills.

THE first inkling the outside world had of the terrible tragedy that was happening at Oracle came over the phone to Tucson while John Redpath was still en route to that city.

“Hello, hello! Is this the police station? Silby speaking. Silby, town constable at Oracle. For God’s sake, send us help! We’re being attacked. Yes, attacked from the air. By strange aircraft, round globes, discharging— oh, I don’t know what it is; only it grows when it hits the earth. Yes, grows. Oracle is hemmed in. And there are the birds—b-i-r-d-s, birds—”

There was a stifled cry, the voice suddenly ceased, and the wire went dead.

“My God!” said the chief of police of Tucson, “somebody’s raving.” He lost no time in communicating with the sheriff’s office and sending out his men. They soon returned, white-faced and shaken.

“Chief,” said the officer in charge of the party, “you know where the road to Oracle switches off the main highway? Well, it’s impassable, covered with stuff a hundred feet high.”

The chief stared. “Are you crazy?”

“No. Listen. It’s the queerest growth you ever saw. Not like vegetation at all. More like twisted metal….”

BUT now the city began to seethe with excitement. Farmers and their families flocked in from the Seep Springs district, and from Jayhnes, telling weird tales of drifting globes and encroaching jungle. The Southern Pacific announced that traffic northward was disrupted. Extras appeared on the streets with shrieking headlines. Everything was in confusion.

A flyer from the local airport flew over Oracle and announced on his return that he could see no signs of the town, that its immediate vicinity was buried under an incredibly tall and tangled mass of vegetation. “From the air it looks like giant stalks of spaghetti, twisted, fantastic,” was his description. He went on to say that he noticed quite a few drifting globes and large birds with black, glistening wings, but these offered no hindrance to his flight.

Now the wires hummed with the startling news. All the world was informed of the tragedy. The great cities of the nation stood aghast. An aroused Washington dispatched orders for the aerial forces of the country to proceed to Arizona without delay. The governor of Arizona mobilized the state militia. All border patrol officers proceeded to the area affected. And yet in the face of what was happening they were powerless to do a thing.

At two o’clock of the day following the wiping out of Oracle, the first black globes approached Tucson. They floated down from the north, skirting the granite ridges and foothills of the Catalinas, and were met with a withering hail of lead from anti-aircraft guns, and burst, scattering wide their contents. When some three hours later the first squadron of the air fleet came to earth on the landing field a few miles south of the city, the northern environs of Tucson, all the area the other side of Speedway, and running east and west as far as the eye could see, was a monstrous jungle a hundred or more feet tall— and still growing.

TERRIFIED residents fled before the uncanny invasion. People congested the streets. Thousands fled from the city in automobiles, and thousands of others thronged the railroad station and bus-line offices seeking for transportation. Rumors ran from lip to lip that Russia was attacking the United States with a newly invented and deadly method of warfare; that it wasn’t Russia but Japan, China, England, Germany, a coalition of European and Asiatic powers.

Frantically, the city officials wired railroad companies to send in emergency trains. The mayor appealed to the citizens to be quiet and orderly, not to give way to panic, that everything was being done to insure their safety. Hastily deputized bodies of men were set to patrolling streets and guarding property. Later, martial law was established. The south side of Speedway rapidly assumed the appearance of an armed camp. At the landing field Flight Commander Burns refueled his ships and interviewed the flyer who had flown over Oracle. That worthy shook his head.

“You’re going out to fight, Commander,” he said, “but God knows what. So far we have been unable to detect any human agency back of those globes. They just drift in, irrespective of how the wind is blowing. So far our only defense has been to shoot them down, but that does little good; it only helps to broadcast their seed. Then, too, the globes shot down have never been examined. Why? Because where they hit a jungle springs up. Sometimes they burst of their own accord. One or two of them got by us in the darkness last night, despite our searchlights, and overwhelmed a company of National Guards.”

The flight commander was puzzled.

“Look here,” he said, “those globes don’t just materialize out of thin air. There must be a base from which they operate. Undoubtedly an enemy is lurking in those mountains.” He got up decisively. “If it is humanly possible to locate and destroy that enemy, we shall do it.”

FLYING in perfect formation, the bombing squadron clove the air. Looking down, the observers could see the gigantic and mysterious jungle which covered many square miles of country. Like sinuous coils of spaghetti, it looked, and also curiously like vast up-pointed girders of steel and iron. The rays of the late afternoon sun glinted on this jungle and threw back spears of intense light. Over the iron ridges of the Catalinas the fleet swept at an elevation of several thousand feet. Westward, numerous huge globes could be seen drifting south. The commander signaled a half dozen of his ships to pursue and shoot them down.

In the mountains themselves, there was surprisingly little of the uncanny vegetation. Mile after mile of billowing hills were quartered, but without anything of a suspicious nature being noted. Here and there the observers saw signs of life. Men and women waved at them from isolated homesteads and shacks. At Mount Lemmon the summer colonists appeared unharmed, but in such rugged country it was impossible to think of landing. Oracle, and for a dozen miles around its vicinity, was deserted.

Though the commander searched the landscape thoroughly with his glasses, he could detect the headquarters of no enemies; and yet the existence of the drifting globes would seem to presuppose a sizable base from which they operated. Mystified, he nevertheless subjected the Oracle area to a thorough bombing, and it was while engaged in doing so that he and his men observed a startling phenomenon.

HIGH in the heavens, seemingly out of nothing, the mysterious globes grew. The aviators stared, rubbed their eyes in amazement, doubted the truth of what they saw. Their commander recollected his own words, “Those globes don’t just materialize out of thin air.” But that actually seemed to be what they were doing. Out of empty space they leaped, appearing first as black spots, and in a moment swelling to their huge proportions.

One pilot made the mistake of ramming a globe, which burst, and he hurtled to earth in a shower of seed, seed which seemed to root and grow and cover his craft with a mass of foliage even as it fell. Horrified, ammunition and explosives exhausted, the amazed commander ordered his ships back to Tucson. What he had to tell caused a sensation.

“No,” he said, finishing his report to the high military official who had arrived with federal forces, “I saw nothing— aside from the globes— that could possibly account for the attack. Nothing.”

But none the less the attack went on. Though hundreds of planes scoured the sky, though great guns bellowed day and night and thousands of soldiers, state and federal, were under arms, still the incredible globes continued to advance, still more and more of the countryside came under the sway of the nightmarish jungle. And this losing battle was not waged without loss of human life. Sometimes bodies of artillery were cut off by globes getting beyond their lines in the darkness and hemming them in. Then they had literally to hack their way out or perish; and hundreds of them perished. One company sergeant told of a thrilling race with three globes.

“It was a close thing,” he said, scratching his head, “and only a third of us made it.”

FEAR gripped the hearts of the most courageous of men. It was terrifying and nerve-racking to face such an unhuman foe— weird, drifting globes and invading jungles whose very source was shrouded in mystery. Against this enemy no weapons seemed to prevail. All the paraphernalia of modern warfare was proving useless. And looking at each other with white faces— not alone in Arizona, but in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles— men asked themselves these questions, and the newspapers posed them:

“What if this thing can’t be stopped?”

“What if it keeps on and on and invades every city and state?”

“It is only starting now, but what will it be like a month from now, a year?”

The whole nation awoke to a realization of its danger. The Administration at Washington solemnly addressed itself to the capitals of the world.

“If some power, jealous of the greatness of America, has perfected a new and barbarous weapon of warfare, and without due warning and declaration of hostilities has launched it against us, not only do we denounce such uncivilized procedure, but demand that such a power speak out and reveal to us and the world who our enemy is.”

But the powers of the world, as one, united in disclaiming any hand in the monstrous attack being made on the United States. As for that attack, it proceeded inexorably. On the fourth day Tucson was evacuated. Then Winkleman awoke one morning to find that the drifting globes had reached the river. The town was abandoned. California mobilized citizen forces in cooperation with Nevada. The great physicist Miller was said to be frantically at work on a chemical designed to destroy the gigantic growths, specimens of which had been sent him. Such was the condition of affairs when, at Washington, Milton Baxter, the young student, told his incredible story to a still more incredulous Senate.

THE Senate had been sitting in anxious session for five days, and was little inclined to give ear to the stories of cranks. Fortunately for the world, young Baxter came of an influential family and had taken the precaution of having himself introduced by two prominent financiers, who demanded that he be heard.

“Gentlemen,” he said earnestly, “contrary to current opinion, America is not being assailed by a foreign power. No! Listen to me a moment and I shall tell you what is attacking America.”

He paused and held the assemblage with compelling eyes.

“But first let me explain how I know what I am going to tell you. I was in London when I read of what is occurring in Arizona. Before the wire went dead on him, didn’t the unfortunate constable of Oracle say something about birds?”

The senators were silent. “Yes,” said a press correspondent at length. “If I remember correctly, he said, ‘And there are the birds— b-i-r-d-s, birds.’”

“Well,” exclaimed Senator Huffy, “the man was pretty well excited and his words may have been misunderstood. What the devil have birds to do with those globes and jungles?”

“More than you think,” replied Baxter. “Listen!” He fixed their attention with uplifted hand. “The thing I have to reveal is of such paramount importance that I must not be interrupted. You must bear with me while I go back some months and even years in time to make myself understood.

“You all remember the mysterious disappearance of Professor Reubens. Yes, I see that you do. It caused a sensation. He was the foremost scientist in the country— it would not be exaggerating too much to say in the world. His name was not as well known among the masses as that of Miller and Dean; in fact, outside of an exclusive circle it wasn’t known at all, but ask any scientist about Reubens. He was a tall, dour man of sixty, with Scotch blood in his veins, and was content to teach a class in a college because of the leisure it afforded him for his own research work. That was at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“The faculty of the college was proud to have him on its staff and provided him with a wooden building back of the campus, for a private laboratory and workshop. I understand that the Rockefeller Institute contributed funds towards Professor Reubens’ experiments, but I am not certain.

“At any rate he had a wonderfully well equipped place. I was a pupil at the University and attended his class in physics. A strong friendship grew up between us. How can I explain that friendship? I was not a particularly brilliant student, but he had few friends and perhaps my boyish admiration pleased him. I think, too, that he was lonely, heart-hungry for affection. His wife was dead, and his own boy…. But I won’t go into that.

“Suffice it to say that I believe he bestowed on me some of the affection he had felt for his dead son. Indeed I am sure he did. Be that as it may, I often visited him in his laboratory and watched, fascinated, as he pored over some of his intricate apparatus. In a vague way, I knew that he was seeking to delve more deeply into the atom.

“‘Before Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope,’ the Professor once said, ‘who ever dreamed of the life in a drop of water? What is needed now is a super-microscope to view the atom.’

“The idea thrilled me.

“‘Do you believe, sir, that an instrument will ever be invented that will do that?’

“‘Yes. Why not? I am working on some such device myself. Of course the whole thing has to be radically different. The present, method of deducing the atom by indirection is very unsatisfactory. We can know nothing for certain until direct observation is possible. The atomic theory that likens the atom to our solar system, with planets revolving round a central nucleus, is very interesting. But I shall never be content, for one, until I can see such an atomic system in operation.’

“Now I had every admiration for the capacity and genius of my teacher, but I couldn’t forebear exclaiming:

“‘Is that possible?’

“‘Of course it’s possible,’ he cried irritably. ‘Do you think I should be pursuing my experiments if I didn’t think it possible? Only numbskulls think anything impossible!’

“I felt rather hurt at his retort and a certain coolness sprang up between us. The summer holidays came and I went away without bidding him good-by. But returning for the new semester, my first act was to hurry to the laboratory. He greeted me as if there had never been any difference between us.

“‘Come,’ he cried; ‘you must see what I have accomplished. It is marvelous, marvelous.’

“In his workshop stood a mechanism perhaps three feet square and four feet high. It was made of polished steel and looked not unlike an Edison music box.

“‘You are the first I have shown it to,’ he said excitedly. ‘Here, look into this.’

“Stooping over the top of the box I peered into the eye-piece indicated. It was so fashioned that it fitted the contour of the face snugly.

“‘Now hold steady,’ warned the Professor. ‘This machine makes quite a noise, but it won’t harm you at all.’

“I sensed that he was fingering and arranging dials and levers on the side of the contrivance. Suddenly an engine in the box began to throb with a steady rhythm. This gradually increased in tempo until the vibration of it shook the room.

“‘Don’t move,’ shouted the Professor.

“At first I could see nothing. Everything was intensely dark. Then the darkness began to clarify. Or rather I should say it seemed as if the darkness increased to such a pitch that it became—oh, I can’t describe it! But of a sudden I had the sensation of looking into the utter bleakness and desolation of interstellar space. Coldness, emptiness—that was the feeling. And in this coldness and emptiness flamed a distant sun, around which twelve darker bodies the size of peas revolved. They revolved in various ellipses. And far off—millions of light years away (the thought came to me involuntarily at the time)—I could glimpse infinitesimal specks of light, a myriad of them. With a cry I jerked back my head.

“‘That,’ shouted the Professor in my ear, ‘was an atomic universe.’

“It never entered my head to doubt him. The realness, the vividness, the overwhelming loneliness and vastness of the sight I had seen— yes, and the suggestion of cosmic grandeur and aloofness that was conveyed— banished any other feeling but that of belief.

“‘Inside that box,’ said Professor Reubens quietly, ‘and directly underneath the special crystal-ray medium I have perfected, is a piece of matter no larger than a pin-head. But viewed through the magnifying medium of the crystal-ray that insignificant piece of matter becomes as vast and as empty as all space, and in that space you saw—an atomic system.’

“An atomic system! Imagine my emotions. The tremendousness of the assertion took away my breath. I could only seize the Professor’s hand and hold to it tightly.

“‘Softly, my boy, softly,’ he said, smiling at my emotion. ‘What you have seen is but the least part of the invention. There is more to it than that.’

“‘More?’

“‘Yes. Did you think I would be content with merely viewing at a distance? No. Consider that revolving round a central nucleus similar to our sun are twelve planets, any one of which may be inhabited by intelligent creatures.’

“I stared at him dumbly.

“‘You mean—’

“‘Why not? Size is only relative. Besides in this case I can demonstrate. Please look again.’

“Not without trepidation, I did as he bade. Once more I saw the black emptiness of atomic space, saw the blazing nucleus with its whirling satellites. Above the roaring noise of the machine came Professor Reubens’ voice. ‘I am now intensifying the magnifying medium and focusing it on one of the planets you see. The magnifying crystal-ray is mounted on a revolving device which follows this particular planet in its orbit. Now… now….’

“I gazed, enthralled. Only one atomic planet— the size of a pea and seemingly motionless in space—now lay in my field of vision. And this planet began to grow, to expand, until beneath my staring eyes it looked like the full moon in all its glory.

“‘I am gradually increasing the magnifying power of the crystal-ray,’ came the voice of the Professor.

“The huge mass of the planet filled the sub-atomic sky. My hands gripped the rim of the box with excitement. On its surface began to form continents, seas. Good God! was all this really materializing from a speck of matter under the lens of a super-microscope? I was looking down from an immense height upon an ever clarifying panorama. Mountains began to unfold, plains, and suddenly beneath me appeared a mighty city. I was too far away to see it distinctly, but it was no city such as we have on earth. And yet it was magnificent; it was like gazing at a strange civilization.

“Dimly I could see great machines laboring and sending forth glowing streamers of light. Strange buildings rose. It was all bizarre, bewildering, unbelievably weird. What creatures dwelt in this place? I strained my eyes, strove to press forward, and in that very moment the things at which I gazed seemed to rise swiftly to meet my descending head. The illusion was that of plunging earthward at breakneck speed. With a stifled cry, I recoiled, rubbed my blinking eyes, and found myself staring stupidly into the face of Professor Reubens. He shut off the machine and regarded me thoughtfully.

“‘In that atomic universe, on a planet swinging round a sub-atomic sun, the all of which lies somewhere in a speck of our matter, intelligent creatures dwell and have created a great machine civilization. And Baxter,’ he leaned forward and fixed me with eyes that gleamed from under heavy brows, ‘not only has my super-atomic-microscope revealed somewhat of that world and its marvels to human vision, but it has opened up another, a more wonderful possibility.’

“He did not tell me what this wonderful possibility was, and a few minutes later I left the laboratory, intending to return after a late class. But a telegram from Phoenix was at my rooms, calling me home. My father was seriously ill. It was June before he recovered his health. Consequently I had to forego college until the next season.

“‘Old Reubens is going dotty,’ said one of my classmates to me. Rather disturbed, I sought him out. I saw that there were dark circles of sleeplessness under his eyes and that his face had grown thinner. Somewhat diffidently I questioned him about his experiments. He answered slowly:

“‘You will recollect my telling you that the super-atomic-microscope had opened up another wonderful possibility?’

“I nodded, sharply curious now.

“‘Look.’

“He led the way into his workshop. The super-atomic-microscope, I noticed, had been altered almost out of recognition. It is hopeless for me to attempt describing those changes, but midway along one side of its length projected a flat surface like a desk, with a large funnel-shaped device resting on it. The big end of this funnel pointed towards a square screen set against the wall, a curious screen superimposed on what appeared to be a background of frosted glass.

“‘This,’ said the Professor, laying one hand on the funnel and indicating the screen with the other, ‘is part of the arrangement with which I have established communication with the world in the atom.

“‘No,’ he said, rightly interpreting my exclamation, ‘I am not crazy. For months I have been exchanging messages with the inhabitants of that world. You know the wave and corpuscular theories of light? Both are correct, but in a higher synthesis— But I won’t go into that. Suffice it to say that I broke through the seemingly insuperable barrier hemming in the atomic world and made myself known. But I see that you still doubt my assertion. Very well, I will give you a demonstration. Keep your eyes on the screen— so—’

“Adjusting what seemed a radio headpiece to my ears, he seated himself at a complicated control-board. Motors purred, lights flashed, every filament of the screen became alive with strange fires. The frosted glass melted into an infinity of rose-colored distance. Far off, in the exact center of this rosy distance appeared a black spot. Despite the headpiece, I could hear the Professor talking to himself, manipulating dials and levers. The black spot grew, it advanced, it took on form and substance; and then I stared, I gasped, for suddenly I was gazing into a vast laboratory, but depicted on a miniature scale.

“But it wasn’t this laboratory which riveted my attention. No. It was the unexpected creature that perched in the midst of it and seemed to look into my face with unwinking eyes of gold set in a flat reptilian head. This creature moved; its feathers gleamed metallically; I saw its bill open and shut. Distinctly through the ear-phones came a harsh sound, a sound I can only describe by the words toc-toc, toc-toc. Then, just as the picture had appeared, it faded, the lights went out, the purring of the motors ceased.

“‘Yes,’ said the Professor, stepping to my side and removing the headpiece, ‘the inhabitants of the sub-atomic planet are birds.’

“I could only stare at him dumbly.

“‘I see that astounds you. You are thinking that they lack hands and other characteristics of the genus homo. But perhaps certain faculties of manipulation take their place. At any rate those birds are intelligent beings; in some respects, further advanced in science than are we ourselves. Perhaps it would be more exact to say that their scientific investigations and achievements have been along slightly different lines. If such messages I sent them had come to our world from another planet or dimension, how readily they might have been misconstrued, ridiculed or ignored.’ The Professor shrugged his shoulders. ‘But the beings in this sub-atomic world interpreted my communications without difficulty.

“In no time we were conversing with one another through means of a simplified code. I was soon given to understand that their scientists and philosophers had long recognized the fact that their universe was but an atom in an immeasurably greater dimension of existence; yes, and had long been trying to establish contact with it.’ The Professor’s voice fell. ‘And not that alone: they were eager to cooperate with me in perfecting a method of passing from their world to ours!

“‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘much of what I have accomplished has been under their advice and guidance; and they on their part have labored; until now’— his eyes suddenly blazed into my fascinated face— ‘until now, after months of intensive work and experiment, success is nigh, and any day may see the door opened and one of them come through!’

“Gentlemen!” cried Milton Baxter, “what more is there to say? I staggered from Professor Reubens’ laboratory that afternoon, my head in a whirl. That was on a Monday.

“‘Come back Thursday,’ he said.

“But as you know, Professor Reubens disappeared on a Wednesday night before; and stranger still, his machines disappeared with him. In his laboratory were signs of a struggle, and bloodstains were found. The police suspected me of a guilty knowledge of his whereabouts, in short of having made away with my friend. When I told somewhat of the experiments he had been engaged in, spoke of the missing inventions, they thought I was lying. Horrified at the suspicion leveled at myself, I finally left Tucson and went abroad. Months passed; and during all those months I pondered the mystery of the Professor’s fate, and the fate of his machines. But my fevered brain could offer no solution until I read of what was happening in Arizona; then, then….”

Milton Baxter leaned forward, his voice broke.

“Then,” he cried, “then I understood! Professor Reubens had succeeded in his last experiment. He had opened the door to earth for the bird intelligences from the atom and they had come through and slain him and spirited away his machines and established them in a secret place!

“God help us,” cried Milton Baxter, “there can be but one conclusion to draw. They are waging war against us with their own hideous methods of warfare; they have set out to conquer earth!”

SUCH was the amazing story Milton Baxter told the Senate, but that body placed little credence in it. In times of stress and disaster cranks and men of vivid imaginations and little mental stability inevitably spring up. But the Washington correspondents wired the story to their papers and the Associated Press broadcast it to the four winds.

Talbot had just returned to Phoenix from New Mexico. He had been out of touch with civilization and newspapers and it was with a feeling of stunned amazement that he learned of the evacuation of Tucson and Winkleman and the wiping out of Oracle. Reading Milton Baxter’s incredible story he leapt to his feet with an oath. Toc-toc! Why, that was the sound the strange birds had uttered in the hills back of Oracle. And there was the noise of machinery coming from the old shaft.

Full of excitement he lost no time in seeking an interview with the military commander whose headquarters were located in Phoenix and related to him what Manuel and himself had witnessed and heard that day at the abandoned mine. Manuel corroborated his tale. The commander was more than troubled and doubtful.

“God knows we cannot afford to pass up an opportunity of wiping out the enemy. If you will indicate on a map where the old shaft is we will bomb it from the air.”

But Talbot shook his head.

“Your planes would have a tough job hitting a spot as small as that from the air. Besides, a direct hit might only close up the shaft and not destroy the workings underground. If the enemy be the creatures Milton Baxter says they are, what is to prevent them from digging their way out and resuming the attack?”

“Then we will land troops in there somehow and overwhelm them with—”

Talbot interrupted. “Pardon me, General, but the enemy would have no difficulty in spotting such a maneuver. What chance would your soldiers have against a shower of jungle seed? You would only be sending them to destruction. No, the only way is for someone familiar with those old underground diggings to enter them, locate the birds and the machines and blow them up.”

“But who—”

“Myself. Listen. This is the plan. About five years ago my company mined for copper and other ores about a half mile above the Wiley claim. I was in charge of operations. That is how I know the ground so well. One of our northern leads broke through into a tunnel of the abandoned mine. When copper prices were shot to hell in the depression of 1930 we quit taking out ore; but when I went through the place eighteen months ago it was still possible to crawl from one mine to another. Of course earth and rock may have fallen since then, but I don’t believe the way is yet blocked. If I were dropped in that vicinity at night with another man and the necessary tools and explosives….”

The general thought swiftly.

“An auto-gyroscope could land you all right. There’s one here now. But what about the second man to accompany you?”

Manuel said quickly, “I’m going with the boss.”

“You, Manuel,” Talbot said roughly. “Don’t be a fool. If anything should happen to me— well, I’ve lived my life; but you’re only a kid.”

Manuel’s face set stubbornly. “An experienced mining man you need, is it not? In case there should be difficulties. And I am experienced. Besides, señores,” he said simply, “my wife and child are somewhere in those mountains … above Oracle….”

Talbot gripped his hand in quick sympathy. “All right, Manuel; come if you like.”

A MOONLESS sky hung above them as they swung over the dark and jungle-engulfed deserted city of Tucson, a sky blazing with the clarity of desert stars, and to the south and west shot through with the beams of great searchlights. Flying at a lofty altitude to avoid contact with drifting globes or betrayal of their coming with no lights showing aboard their craft save those carefully screened and focused on the instrument board, it was hard to realize that the fate of America, perhaps of the world, hung on the efforts of two puny individuals.

Everything seemed unreal, ghost-like, and suddenly the strangeness of it all came over Talbot and he felt afraid. The noiseless engine made scarcely a sound; the distant rumble of gunfire sounded like low and muttering thunder. They had come by way of Tucson so as to pick up a ten-gallon tube of concentrated explosive gas at the military camp in the Tucson mountains.

“This gas,” the general had assured them, “has been secretly developed by the chemical branch of the War Department and is more powerful than TNT or nitro-glycerin. It is odorless, harmless to breathe and exploded by a wireless-radio device.”

He had showed them how to manipulate the radio device, and explained that in the metal tube was a tiny chamber from which gas could not escape, and a receiving-detonating cap. “If you can introduce the tube into the underground galleries where you suspect the enemy’s headquarters to be, allow the contents to escape for ten minutes, and a mile distant you can blow the mine and all in it to destruction. And you needn’t be afraid of anything escaping alive,” he had added grimly.

TALBOT thought of his words as the dark and silent world slid by. He glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist-watch. Eleven-fifteen. The moon rose at eleven-twenty-four. He studied the map. High over Mount Lemmon the craft soared. He touched the army pilot’s arm. “All right,” he said, “throttle her down.” Their speed decreased. “Lower.”

Swiftly they sank, until the dark bulk of hills and trees lay blackly beneath; so near as to seem within the touch of a hand. Though he strained his ears, no alien sound came wafting upward. “Keep circling here,” he directed the pilot. “The moon’ll be up in a minute and then we can be sure of where we are.” The pilot nodded. He was a phlegmatic young man. Not once during the trip had he uttered a word.

The east glowed as if with red fire. Many a time before had Talbot watched the moon rise, but never under stranger circumstances. Now the night was illuminated with mellow glory. “Hit the nail on the head,” he whispered. “Do you see that spot over there? To the left, yes. Can you land us there?”

Without a word the pilot swung for the clearance. It was a close thing, requiring delicate maneuvering, and only an auto-gyroscope could have made it without crashing. Hurriedly Manuel and Talbot unloaded their gear.

“All right,” said Talbot to the pilot. “No need to wait for us. If we are successful, we’ll send out the wireless signal agreed on, and if we aren’t….” He shrugged his shoulders. “But tell the General to be sure and allow us the time stipulated on before undertaking another attack.”

STANDING there on the bleak hillside, watching the auto-gyroscope run ahead for a few yards and then take the air, Talbot experienced a feeling of desolation. Now he and Manuel were alone, cut off from their own kind by barriers of impregnable jungle. And yet on that lonely hillside there were no signs of an enemy. For a moment he wondered if he weren’t asleep, dreaming; if he wouldn’t soon awake to find that all this was nothing but a nightmare.

But Manuel gathering up the tools aroused him from such thoughts. Not without difficulty were the necessary things conveyed to the abandoned mine back of the old Wiley claim. Their course lay along the bottom of a dry creek, over a ridge, and so to the shaft half-way down the side of a hill. A second trip had to be made to bring the gas tube.

It was two o’clock in the morning when Manuel stood at the foot of the four-hundred-foot hole and signaled up that the air was good. Talbot lowered the tools to him, and the gas container, and lastly went down himself. As already stated, Talbot had explored the underground workings of the mine not eighteen months before. Picking out the main tunnel and keeping a close watch for rattlers with electric torches, the two men went cautiously ahead. In places earth had fallen and had to be cleared away, but the formation for the most part was a soft rock and shale. They went slowly, for fear of starting slides.

At a spot taking an abrupt turn— and it was here that the newer tunnel had broken through into the older gallery of the Wiley claim— Manuel caught swiftly at Talbot’s arm. “What is that?” To straining ears came the unmistakable throb of machinery. They snapped off their torches and crouched in Stygian darkness. Not a ray of light was to be seen. Talbot knew that in following the ore stratum, the Wiley gallery took several twists. Laboriously he and Manuel advanced with the gas tube. It was stiflingly close. He counted the turns, one, two, three. Now the roar of machinery was a steady reverberation that shook the tunnel. He whispered to Manuel:

“Go back and wait for me at the mouth of the shaft. Only one of us must risk taking the gas tube any nearer the enemy. Here, take my watch. It is now two-forty-five. If I don’t rejoin you by four o’clock touch off the explosive.”

Manuel started to protest. “Do as I say,” commanded Talbot. “The fate of the world is at stake. Give me an hour; but no longer— remember!”

LEFT alone in the clammy darkness Talbot wiped the sweat from his face. Grabbing one end of the rope sling in which the tube was fastened, he pulled it ahead. There was a certain amount of unavoidable noise; rock rattled, earth fell; but he reasoned shrewdly enough that the roar of the machinery would drown this. Beyond a crevice created by a cave-in he saw an intense light play weirdly. He squirmed through the crevice and pulled the tube after him.

His mind reconstructed the mine ahead. He recollected that when the lead of this mine had petered out, the owners had begun to sink the shaft deeper into the earth before abandoning the mine. This meant that the foot of the shaft, with the addition of an encroaching twenty feet of the southern gallery, was deeper by some several yards than the floor of the tunnel in which he stood. Here was the logical place to set the gas tube, nose pointed ahead.

With trembling fingers he loosened the screwed-in nose of the tube with a wrench. A slight hiss told of the deadly gas’s escape. It would inevitably flow towards the shaft, drawn by the slight suction of machinery, following the easiest direction of expansion. Now Talbot’s work was done, and if he had immediately retreated all would have been well, but the weird light fascinated him. Here he was, one man in the bowels of earth pitting his strength, his ingenuity against something incredible, unbelievable. Beings from an atomic universe, from a world buried within the atom; beings attacking his own earth with uncanny methods of destruction. Oh, it was impossible, absurd, but he must look at them, he must see.

Scarcely daring to breathe, he squirmed, he crawled, and suddenly he saw. He was looking down into an underground crypt flooded with brilliant light. That crypt had been altered out of all recognition, its greater expanse of roof supported with massive pillars, the light screened away from the shaft. But it was not all this which riveted his staring eyes. No—it was the machines; strange, twisted things, glowing, pulsing, and—in the light of his knowledge—menacing and sinister.

TALBOT gasped. Almost at once he observed the birds, twelve of them, two standing in front of what appeared to be a great square of polished crystal, wearing metal caps and goggles, heads cocked forward intently. The others also perched in front of odd machines like graven images. That was the uncanny thing about the birds: they appeared to be doing nothing. Only the occasional jerk of a head, the filming of a hard golden eye, gave them a semblance of life. But, none the less, there could be no mistaking the fact that they were the guiding, the directing geniuses back of all the pulsing, throbbing mechanisms.

Half mesmerized by the sight, forgetful of time and place, Talbot leaned forward in awe. There was a great funnel, a shallow cabinet, and out of the cabinet poured an intense reddish beam, and out of the beam….

It was a minute before he understood, and then comprehension came to him. Those dark spots shooting from the cabinet, no larger than peas, were the mysterious drifting globes whose scattered seed was fast covering miles of Arizonian soil with impenetrable jungle. From a universe in a piece of matter no larger than a pin-head, from a sub-atomic world, the weapons of an alien intelligence were ruthlessly being hurled against man, to conquer, to destroy him.

And now it was made plain to him why the drifting globes had seemed to materialize out of thin air. Being infinitesimally small parts of an atom, these globes were released from the cabinet and soon assumed the size of peas; they were guided across the crypt, up the old Wiley shaft, and high in the air, somewhere in space, enlarged to immense proportions. How? Talbot could not guess. By some manipulation of science and machinery beyond that of earth.

Engrossed, he moved an inch forward, craned his head, and in that moment it happened. Beneath his weight a section of earth and rock crumbled, cracked, slid forward, and he plunged headlong to the floor below, striking his skull with stunning force!

HE came to himself, staring up into the dour-looking face of a tall man. He recollected pitching forward among the birds and the machines. But the birds and the machines had disappeared and he was lying in an odd room without windows but lit with a soft radiance. Bewildered, he sat up.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

The man’s beard looked straggly, untrimmed.

“My name,” he said, “is Reubens— Professor Reubens.”

Professor Reubens! Talbot gasped. “Not the scientist who disappeared?”

“Yes— as you’ve disappeared.”

“What!”

“Through the machine.”

It was a moment before Talbot understood. “You mean….”

“That you are a prisoner in a sub-atomic world.”

Talbot now realized with startling clearness what had happened to him. When he had fallen into the crypt the weird birds had directly placed him in the cabinet and transported him to their own world. In other words, he and Reubens and everything he saw about him were infinitely small creatures in an atom-world. He and the Professor were trapped! And when Manuel blew up the only means of return….

“How long have I been here?” Talbot asked hoarsely.

“Five minutes at the most.”

Then, at the shortest, the way to earth would exist twenty minutes longer. Twenty minutes…. Incoherently he told Reubens of what had happened in Arizona since his disappearance, of his own misadventure.

“Aye,” said the Professor, “I knew as much. Nor do these inhuman birds intend stopping with the use of seed globes. More devilish weapons than that they plan using against earth. Oh, they are fiends, fiends! Already have they wiped out civilization and intelligent life on other planets in this sub-atomic system and introduced their own.”

HE stopped, shuddering. “Nor is it to be wondered at that no birds were seen after the first attack on Oracle,” he went on. “They do not fight in person, as do we ourselves, but through proxy, directing machines from centers of control. In powers of destruction, they are immeasurably ahead of man. Thank God you discovered their headquarters in the deserted mine and have spread the gas for its destruction. But the rage of the birds at such a defeat will be terrible. They will undoubtedly torture me in an effort to make me reveal the basis of my invention so that they can resume the attack on earth. So we must escape.”

“But how—where?”

“I have thought that out. It is one chance in a thousand. Undoubtedly we will be killed. But that is better than being tortured or living in this world. Look.”

He held up a pearl-handled penknife. “The birds are smart, all right, but they don’t quite understand clothes, wearing none themselves. They found your revolver, but overlooked this.”

“Of what good is it?”

“To cut our way out of this cell.”

Talbot laughed incredulously. The walls of the room were smooth, and hard to the touch. “They’re as solid as concrete,” he said.

“But cut like cheese under a steel blade. I found that out. Watch.”

To Talbot’s amazement the point of the penknife sank into the wall and in a moment a section of it was gouged out. The professor said tensely, “I’ve been months in this place, been taken back and forth, and know the lay of the land. This room is in a great building that houses the laboratory from which the attack against earth is being launched. Would you believe it, only the great scientist who picked up my messages and helped me perfect my invention, and a few of his assistants, are concerned in that attack, and they will be congregated at the machines. Follow me, and whatever I command, do it promptly.”

THE Professor had been working feverishly as he spoke, and now he and Talbot crawled through the hole he had made in the wall and found themselves in a long gloomy corridor. “Quick,” Reubens whispered.

They darted down the passageway. Talbot had only time to see that the gleaming sides of the corridor were beveled and etched with strange designs, before they came to its end and where a curious device like a huge five-pointed star was revolving noiselessly, half sunk in a great hole in the floor. Without hesitation the Professor stepped onto one of the flat-tipped star-points as it came level with where they stood and Talbot did the same. Up, turned the star-point, to a dizzy height, and over, but the tip swung on ball-bearings, maintaining its passengers in a perpendicular position, and from its highest point of elevation descended to another floor far below, where they disembarked.

The huge revolving star-wheel was nothing but an ingenious movable staircase. But the Professor gave Talbot no time to marvel, nor did the latter try to linger. The corridor below was wider, more richly beveled and carved, and the statue of an heroic bird stood perched in the center of it. The lighting was soft and mellow, but Talbot could perceive no windows or globes. Suddenly from an open doorway hopped a bird. There was no chance to avoid it. Its wings were spread and from its parted bill came a harsh cry, “Toc-toc, toc-toc!”

KNIFE in one hand, the Professor hurled himself forward and caught the bird in the grip of the other. Instantly from the doorway sprang a monstrous mechanism on stilts, flexible tentacles of metal reaching out and wrapping themselves around the Professor. Talbot leaped to the Professor’s assistance. The mechanism fought like a live thing. In vain he strove to wrench the tentacles free of the Professor. One of them lashed out and took him by the thighs in a crushing grasp. But the Professor had the bird by the throat. Both of his hands were free. Back, he forced its head, back. The mechanism seemed to falter in the attack, as if bewildered. Across the exposed throat the Professor drew the gleaming blade. Flesh, tendons and arteries gave, blood spurted, and in the same moment the tentacles fell away from Talbot and the Professor and withdrew with a dull clang. The Professor released the bird and it dropped to the floor.

“It is the birds’ mentality that directs those mechanisms,” said the Professor, pointing to the now harmless machine.

Apparently the brief but terrific battle had passed unnoticed, no alarm being given. Now the corridor twisted. The two men came to where a deep well was sunk in the floor. To one side a star-wheel revolved smoothly. Out of the depths came the steady throb of machinery. Cautiously peering over the edge, Talbot saw a sight he would never forget.

HE did not need the Professor’s whispered words to tell him that here was the source of the deadly attack being waged against earth. Motionless birds perched in front of bizarre machines; lights waxed and waned; a cannon-like device, or funnel, shot a column of light into a screen, and through the column of light moved a steady procession of round objects the size of plums.

“The drifting globes being shot through to earth,” whispered the Professor, “and our only hope. Listen, the birds are intent on their machines, their backs to the star-wheel. We will descend, throw ourselves into the column of light, seize hold of a globe, and….”

He did not need to finish. Talbot understood in a flash. They would be dragged to their own world by the weapons hurled at it.

“Of course that column of light may kill us,” went on the Professor tensely. “Or we may be blown up on the other side. Your Mexican friend hasn’t touched off that explosive gas yet, because— But we’ve not a moment to lose. Follow me.”

The tip of the star-wheel went up, over, descended. The blood was roaring in Talbot’s ears. “Now!” hissed the Professor. “Now!” Together they rushed forward. Talbot’s foot slipped. The heart leaped into his throat. He never remembered reaching the column of light; but suddenly he was in it, blinded, dazed. His clutching hands closed on something small and hard.

The laboratory was a pinwheel going round and round. Through a sea of darkness he floated. A distant glow grew, expanded, became the crypt in the old Wiley mine. A moment he glimpsed the gleaming pillars, the pulsing machines, the startled birds, and then— Oh, it was incredible, impossible, but the dark, crumbling walls of the old shaft were around him; the globe in his hand no larger than a pea was lifting him towards life and safety.

He wanted to shout, to sing, but even as the pale stars fell athwart his upturned face, even as the cool mountain air smote his fevered brow, the dark earth erupted beneath his feet, a whirlwind of smoke and wind beat and buffeted him, and, in the midst of an overwhelming noise, consciousness was blotted out!

It was bright daylight when Talbot regained his senses. Propped against a great rock the Professor regarded him whimsically. Reubens looked badly bruised and battered; one arm hung loosely at his side. Talbot’s head ached and he knew that a leg was broken.

“Yes,” said the Professor, “we got through just in time— a few seconds before the explosive gas was touched off. Thank God, my invention has been destroyed. The world is safe.”

Yes, the world was safe. Talbot sank back with a sigh of relief. Overhead a white plane was dipping toward earth.

_____________________

11: A Knight-Errant

Katharine Tynan

1859-1931

Wagga Wagga Express (NSW) 27 July 1901

MR. HERBERT STANDISH, barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple, possessed what other men considered an inexplicable fascination for women of all ages. He did not go out of his way to exercise it, and those malevolent persons of his own seat who spoke of him as a male flirt, with biting reference to his age, were hardly justified of their bitterness.

As a matter of fact, the many vagraut fancies which had fixed upon him at one time or another had done so uninvited. It was hardly to be imputed to him as a fault that he could not help being nice to women, and being perhaps a little nicer than usual when it was made plain to him that another girl or woman had fallen in love with his grizzling hairs and forty years.

He was a spare, tall, long-limbed man, with a certain elegance of air which marked him out in the drawing-rooms he frequented; or, indeed, in any other place. His grey temples, his sailor skin, and his jaded look of his eyes, hardly took from his attractiveness. Indeed something, the mystery of his coldness, perhaps, seemed to make him more alluring to women as the years passed.

As a matter of fact, Standish was not cold. He was indeed freshly and unexpectedly romantic under his apparent invulnerability. Once, long ago in early manhood, he had seen for an instant ideal love, as he had dreamed it. It had not been for him, and it had flown to fairer worlds almost before he had realised its beauty, but he had never forgotten the revelation.

If now he sometimes looked over curiously at the girls and women he met— it was because he had always an irrational hope that that divine glimpse might again be vouchsafed to him. How did he know but that any day, in any drawing-room, in the street, on the river, he might meet the lady of his dreams. He had always been disappointed hitherto. Never, since Mary Grayson died, had he met Love. Women of all ages made much of him. He was eligible as well as attractive, and had gifts of mind as well as of person and manner.

So it was that he had drifted into being made much of by Mrs. Lawrence, the wife of Tom Lawrence, a good, honest, stupid fellow, one fair hair of whose head was worth all worthless Mrs. Dolly.

Standish could hardly have explained himself how he had drifted into being always at Mrs. Dolly's beck and call, and why he was to be found so often on the hearthrug at 'The Cedars' when the Lawrences' butler brought in the afternoon tea. It was Mrs. Dolly's doing, no doubt, and Tiny, who was head over ears in love with his heartless little wife, looked on Dolly's friendship with Herbert Standish contentedly.

Standish arrived one afternoon in April rather later than usual, and found Mrs. Lawrence very much put out at something or other. Even the lilies-of-the-valley from Covent Garden which he put at her feet, failed to dispel the cloud on her brow. For the first time Standish felt that Mrs. Dolly was inclined to impose a poke upon him to which his broad shoulders did not bend gracefully.

While he was chafing a little at the lady's exactions, the hopes of the house, Guy, Cecil, and Arthur, rioted into the room, followed more demurely by their sister, Millicent, a mincing little girl, who, by-and-bye, would be the image of her mother. It was a jest of Mrs. Dolly's that Standish was to marry Millicent one day; and even now, at eight years' old Millicent, nursing her doll, made unsuspected eyes at the tall figure on the hearthrug.

Following came Nora O'Brien, Mrs. Lawrence's new governess.

As the slender girl in the straight blue frock passed silently to her place behind the tea-table, Standish's heart gave a sodden unexpected throb. With such a heart-throb the lad of eighteen had looked on the heaven-destined beauty of Mary Grayson, but never since, never since had it beaten with such a high hope, with such a quick despair.

The winds that in the garden toss

The guelder-roses give me pain,

Alarm me with the dread of loss,

Exhaust me with the hope of gain.

An instant, and he had stepped forward to take the cups from the new governess's hand. Mrs. Lawrence had not introduced him to the new inmate of her house. She never did introduce her governesses, a fact of which Standish was aware, and which had often caused him a feeling of contemptuous irritation with charming Mrs. Dolly. But since he was so often a visitor he had come to be on speaking terms with the long line of Mrs. Lawrence's governesses, so many of whom had failed to please the lady and her exacting young daughter.

As he took the cup from Miss O'Brien's hand, he paused an instant and looked down into her eyes. She did not change colour, but looked at him steadfastly. Her eyes were dark-blue, fringed with black lashes. He seemed to look down into her heart in that instant of time, to ask her if she was really the one he had been looking for since he lost Mary Grayson.

What she answered with her steadfast long look he could not read so easily. Only he was sure she was honest and true, and that her love was his to win if he could. He smelt the fresh spring-like smell of the daffodills in the breast of her blue gown. It was bewildering.

Then a word from his hostess, spoken a little snappishly, recalled him.

He carried the cup of tea to Mrs. Dolly, and fetched her the tiny table to hold it which she waa in the habit of using. He offered her the 'foie gras' sandwiches and the buttered toast. Only a very fine observer would have noticed that his eyes were alert now, no longer jaded, and that something like a spring wind  had put a little colour in his face and ruffled his smooth hairs ever so little.

Little Millicent on her footstool watched the new governess from eyes that had a trick of narrowing like her mother's, watched her and then went on furtively to Herbert Standish's subtly altered face.

The weeks of the spring went by in a jocund procession. Standish was as assiduous as ever in his attendance at 'The Cedars,' and the house by the river grew pleasanter as the may burst in blossom, and the little flotilla of the water-Iillies rocked at its moorings.

He hardly ever spoke with Mrs Lawrence's governess, yet from his place on the hearthrug against the background of palms and ferns which had taken the place of the fire, he had watched her incessantly.

He had angered Mrs Lawrence once or twice by, unnecessarily it seemed to her, turning over the pages of the governess's music or by lingering by the piano while she sang her heart-piercing Irish songs in the richest, softest of contraltos. However, after a time he was forgiven, because he loved music, and it was excuse enough for his transgression, since even Mrs. Lawrence could not deny the beauty of the Irish girl's singing.

So few words passed between them, and yet he seemed to know much about Nora O'Brien and her uneventful history. Her father, the retired army officer, her delicate mother, the old, big barrack of a house on the Shannon, full of out-of-elbows, happy, hungry girls and boys. He imagined it as Nora's homesick eyes saw it. He knew about her years in the French convent. He knew the very names of the dogs in her Irish home. And yet so little, so little, had passed between them. He was so far from making her conspicuous by his attentions that perhaps only one person was aware of the steady regard with which the very eyes of his soul seemed turned on Nora O'Brien, and that was a little person, supposed about this time to be much engrossed in the making of a doll's trousseau.

It was about two months after Miss O'Brien's coming to 'The Cedars' that Standish came in upon a perturbed scene in the drawing-room, where things were usually so well-ordered. He came in unannounced by way of the garden and the verandah, to find Miss Lawrence and her governess Confronting each other.

The lady was in a high state of wrath. Her cheek had an added brilliance to that of the rouge-pot, and her eyes were narrowing and opening to display a fierce light an depths that usually looked shallow enough. Her voice was raised, her dramatic right hand pointed to the pale girl, who stood with one hand resting on the table as for support. As soon as Miss Lawrence caught eight of Standish, she dmipfped into a cbair, and pressed her hankerchief to her eyes.

'I am so ashamed she began, 'such a dreadful thing, and to think of those dear children! How little I know!'

'Mrs. Lawrence thinks I stole one of her jewels,' said the girl, answering the question in Standish's face. She was white to the lips, but stood perfectly upright, and something in the pose of her uplifted face suggested an appeal from an earthly to a heavenly judge.

'Think!' echoed Mrs Lawrence furiously. 'When it was found hidden arway among your things, you horrid girl. Upon my word, I think in the interests of justice I shall have to prosecute you. If I send you back to your father you will be presently stealing from somebody else.'

'Nonsense!' said Standish, with a roughness he had never before used to a woman. 'Miss O'Brien has stolen nothing of yours. What hallucination is this, Mrs. Lawrence?'

Mrs. Dolly gasped for breath, then recovered herself, and her next speech had a slow and cold malice. 'She will have to prove it then! She admired it from tbe beginning, my beautiful pink pearl pin. I should never have suspected her, of oourse, only for my darling Millicent's acuteness. Will you defend Miss O'Brien, Mr. Standish?'

Herbert Standish made a step or two to the girls' side, and took her cold fingers in his and raised them to his lips. 'If she will permit me,' he said, 'I will defend her with my life.'

There was a horrible commotion out side, and suddenly a struggling little girl in the midst of a mass of bees came as though from a catapult into the middle of the drawing-room flow.

'Here she is, the little sneak!' cried Guy, Cecil, and Arthur with one voice, pushing their sister Millicent towards the astonished group by the mantelshelf. Millicent was dishevelled and looked cold. Her eyes had frozen tears in them, and her lips were blue.

'What have you been doing to your sister, you rough boys?' cried Mrs. Dolly, indignantly, forgetting her own grievances for the moment.

'Only holding her head downward over the pond till she confessed,' cried her brothers triumphantly.

'Confessed what?'

'Why, that she sneaked that old pin of yours and hid it away in Miss O'Brien's things.'

The miserable Milicent's tears melted and began to run forlornly down her cheeks.

'I did do it,' she said, 'and I don't know what I did it for, and if it wasn't for those hateful boys I'd say now I didn't do it. But they'd nearly drown me again.'

Mrs. Dolly pushed the sobbing penitent from her.

'I am really veny much annoyed,' she said. 'I'm sure I don't know why people ever have any children to be so horrid. I must apologise, Miss O'Brien. Of course you won't care to remain in charge of these children any longer.'

Standish had a wicked thought of suggesting that Miss O'Brien had a very good case for damages, but refrained for Tom Lawrence's sake.

'It has only made us understand each other a little sooner,' he said, taking up again the hand which the entrance of the young Lawrences had made him drop. 'But, of course, in any case I could not have spared her to you for very long, lilt. Lawrenoe.'

'I had no ideaꟷ' began Mrs. Dolly civilly.

'I say, old fellow,' shouted the three hopes of the house in one voice, 'it's no end of a shame for you to go sneaking the very nicest governess we ever had.'

_________________

12: He Stoops To Conquer

Albert Kinross

1870-1929

The Royal Magazine Apr 1901

Wagga Wagga Express (NSW)  3 August 1901

THE HOTEL had begun to stare at Captain Barry. True, he had put aside his  crutches, and with them the interesting invalid— he leaned now heavier upon a stick, but that was not the reason. The hotel had grown cold. Barry and Barry's friend were discuased audibly in the lounge, and in the drawing-room one heard indignant voices.

He had come there early in the year, sunbaked, lean and crippled, he and his nurse and the crutches. 'Shot through both thighs at Magersfontein', was the rumour, and inquiry confirmed it. Everybody petted Barry then. The ladies hardly waited for an introduction, the men in the smoke-room left him the easiest chair. But now— people wore shaking, their heads. He had long since discarded the crutches and sent away the nurse.

Instead of her and a nine o'clock bed-time, came Hooper from the camp, roung, tall, the unmistakable subaltern; and these two sat together in the smoke-room till unholy hours and drank. They drank whiskey, often a bottle at a sitting, said report. The ladies in the drawing-room were neglected and those in the lounge, outside where you could smoke, sought naught of Barry.

Barry had declined. The head waiter had put him to bed three times in one week, so said report. As a matter of fact, it was only once. And then Hooper was sent out to South Africa, was bundled off to the front, and Barry became sober again and took a comfortable seat in the shade; and one dear woman, cosily lodged in the Sand gate Road, reviled Barry under heir breath and said insulting things about Hooper.

I had looked in. I had seen that Barry had not taken nearly so much is he pretended; that Hooper had had more than his fair share of the whiskey, and was, indeed, as that dear woman to whom reference has already been made had put it, a fool garnished with liberal and changing adjectives. He was vain, he was weak, he was gullible and doubly broke. He borrowed money for cab fares and never had cigarettes of his own.

Once I had more than looked on, only once. It was Hooper's last night in camp; he was to sail next day . Barry came into my room before dinner, threw away his stick, and sat down on the bed.

'Excuse me,' he said, 'but will you join Hooper and me this evening? He's dining here, and I must keep him till twelve. If you join us it'll be easier.'

I looked at Barry for more.

'I must keep him till twelve— he'll have to leave the Service if I don't. Barry had dropped his invalid's graces, even the husky drawl he had of late affected; he was short, brisk, and quite the soldier.

'I don't really know you,' he said, 'except from stopping at the hotel— but you're on Englishman are you not ?'

I nodded, waiting for him.

'We're to make a night of it then— well, Hooper sails to-morrow. And— er,' he added as an after-thought, 'if we're a bit rowdy you needn't mind Gutekunst.'ꟷ the hotel was Gutekunst's— 'I've squared him, and a cab will be here at twelve to take the cub home. We're to hold him till then,' and Barry went out.

That was all I knew for the present, but it seemed enough to go on with. I was down in Folkestone for change, and this promised a little.

Ten minutes later I met Barry in the Hall. He was leaning heavily on his stick, and the ladies were making way for him as for one who had fallen. They were very cold, and his laugh was harsh and husky, and he had a bold look that none of them seemed to like.

By-and-bye came Hooper. The two dined together at their table and drank much wine. People remarked upon the quantity of wine and the loudness of Barry's laugh. Even Hooper reproved him, kicking him under the table with that object. They had their coffee in the lounge, and there I was introduced, and there Barry ate lighted matches, called the waiter by original names, and otherwise misconducted himself. He insisted on our arms when we turned into the smoke-room, and there he produced cards, letting Hooper win. Soon, however Hooper got restless and looked at the clock. But Barry would not let him go.

'You've won our money,' said Barry, 'and now you're off.'

Hooper pleaded an important engagement— 'my last night, you know,' he explained.

'Let her go,' said Barry, 'you're off to-morrow, and I want some of my money back.'-

So we played on, and Hooper won. We let him win, Barry handing me coins— 'It'll save the fag of going up to your room,' he said, and he winked. I lost most of it; and Hooper, fired by his winnings, began to grow reckless. He also drank much whiskey.

A second time he looked at the clock and threw down his cards.

'No you don't. Have another peg and give us a fair chance!' said Barry.

And between us we kept him. It was expensive at first, but when we started to win, we overhauled him pretty fast. His play became wilder, and he was losing quicker than he had won. Every once and a while he looked at the clock, but now that the game had turned, it was he who wanted to stay, and, when we had quite cleaned him out he kept on, marking his losses on a piece of paper. And we stood thus; even let him cheat, at which he was clumsy.

He was something to the good when we left off and fairly resigned.

'You chaps have made me miss a good thing— poor girl, I've a good mind to knock her up now,' he said, pocketing his money.

But Barry didn't mind this time. 'Another peg, old chap, and good luck to you,' he said, filling for Hooper. Half and half it was. And then Hooper got up and staggered.

'Didn't know I was as bad as this,' he said doubtfully, 'I'll have a fly.'

We rang for the deegv waiter. He'd been abusing us in German for keeping - him out of bed, but he was wide awake enugh to know that Hooper's fly was three. And so presently Hooper set out, very -bye to him

He gave an address in the Sandgate Road. But Barry was ready for this.  He had thrown his stick away, taken somebody's cap and coat from the hall, and had actually mounted the box.

'If you're not too tired you might wait,' he said, aa they rolled off, 'I'd better see this through.'

I grinned; for he was personally conducting Hooper back to his quarters at Shorncliffe Camp.

Barry came to me in my room not so very long after. The electric light had gone and we sat with candles.

'Hooper's safe,' said Barry; 'and— and— there'll be the dickens to pay somewhere.'

I looked and Barry caught my look.

'But, of course, you don't understand all this,' he continued . ' You've, been deuced good to trust me. It's like this, They're short of men at the camp owing to the war, too short for words, and so Hooper's been on the Staff— they've had an ass like Hooper on the Staff! The General doesn't know, what I know— Hooper's in my regiment, t'other battalion, but transferred now— the Gen eral doesn't know that he's hard up and a silly young fool and just the sort to blab to the first pretty woman that takes any notice of him. I've done all this off my own bat, kept him out of one sort or misonier as far as I was able. You see I knew Hooper's people and how sick they'd be if he got the boot, had to' leave the Service— and he's in my regiment. He's ordered out, and I think he'll come on with a little kicking— Africa will do him good.' Then he asked quite casually as it seemed, 'Know Folkestone?'

'Only the Front.'

'I know it well,' said Barry. 'Now, there's the Sandgate Road for instance, and a lady living there— nice house, plenty of money, she entertains, manners charming, everything as it should be. But nobody knows where it all comes from. Well, we say France— in the Service, you know. We can't prove it, not yet. We say that the lady in the Sandgate Road draws a handsome salary from the French War Office, and that most of it's spent on subalterns— especially when they're on the staff. No, you never meet a woman there, but young fools like Hooper and pernaps an innocent person like me. But mostly young fools like Hooper, and, if they're on the Staff, they're worth knowing. You see they come across secrets, and if they're broke, they may sell 'em, especially if they're helped. Hooper thinks he's quite the lady-killer because he was going round there to-night to blab— something about the Dover mine-fields.

'It's been a fight all the last month, myself and whiskey and cards against the lady in the Sandgate Road— I've made him come here as much as I could— kept up the invalid and this stick on purpose. It's been a fight— and I fancy I've won,' said Barry. 'But I've ruined my reputation,' he added with a smile, 'the hotel's near cutting me.'

He rose to go.

'Of course this— this is private— you'rr an Englishman,' said he.

'And a journalist,' said I. 'But I'll change the names.'

'Well, I can't stop you.' said Captain Barry.

_____________________

13: Not On The Bill

J. U. Giesy

Adventure December 1914

THE band stopped playing.  Throughout the “big top” there fell one of those pauses which always precede a major act on the bill— a sort of preliminary silence which  arrests the attention of the spectators and  contributes in a subtle manner to the nerve-tension which the amusement-seeking public now considers synonymous with getting their money’s worth.

High up on a spidery tower, midway of the tent, and directly in front of the reserved section, movement occurred. A man arose and approached a black square on which shone polished levers. A second figure arose, cast off a robe which shrouded its outlines, and stood revealed as a girl in pale pink fleshings about supple, pliant torso and limbs.

Viewed from below she looked small, dainty, young and blonde in a gold-and-crimson way. She took up a sort of wand and advanced to the edge of the tower’s top, from which a wire stretched down at a slight angle from an upright, beside a little ladder-like set of steps.

The ringmaster raised his hands. The silence continued. All other acts in the

three rings below, and on the wires and trapeze above, came to a halt. The announcer’s megaphone rang out to all parts of the monster tent:

“Ladies and gentlemen! Mlle. Mitchi Maya in her daring performance on the Live Wire! There are five thousand volts of deadly current passing through the wire upon which she works. Five thousand volts! Enough to strike a dozen men dead. A slip— a misstep— ah! Permit me to ask you all to maintain absolute silence during this exceedingly hazardous act. Are you ready, Mile. Maya? Then— go!”

With a crackling sputter, two large arc-lights, one green on the tower, one red  above the net where the wire ran down and ended, leaped into life as the man on the tower pushed a shining lever home. The girl bowed. She ran up the little steps to a level with the wire. She bowed again, poised like a diver; then—she stepped out on the wire itself.

A burst of flame came from under her shoe at the contact. The side of her body above the limb she stood on sprang into an outline of tiny parti-colored lights. She advanced a step. Again a flash of blue fire marked her action. Lights outlined the limb and girdled her slender waist on the opposite side.

She put down both feet and stood drawn in colored light. She walked, she ran, she danced on the deadly thing beneath her, turned and ran back to the ladder-like steps, and so down to the tower-top.

Already her assistant was busy. As the avid crowd sighed its relief and gaped for more, he led her to the edge, this time beneath the wire.

She turned back her face and seized something in her mouth. On her back the man was fastening something, one could not just see what; but in a moment one understood. She lifted her naked arms. The wings of a giant butterfly sprang into view. They waved as in preparation for flight, and— she was off!

Hanging by her teeth, arms outstretched, the wings and her body a mass of scintillating brilliance, the wheel upon which she slid and beneath which she clung throwing off sparks like the flare of a trolley from a charged wire!

She flashed down the wire, landed in the net and stood bowing to the wave of applause which greeted her having accomplished the thing once more. Then she slid to the ground on a rope, ran from the ring and so back to the “trapping-room.”

The “Human Butterfly” act of the Barnaby Shows was ended.

It was a genuine “thriller.” I, who was press agent of Barnaby’s Shows, knew all about it. I knew that it had already been the indirect cause of a man’s death, and of a wedding; and that it had nearly killed the woman who had just performed it anew and was making her way out of the ring while the audience rustled back to a casual interest in less sensational numbers of the bill.

I glanced into her face and nodded as she passed me in the fly of the big top. She nodded back with a smile. She was as winsome, as fresh near at hand as she looked on the tower. She was young, and seemingly happy.

I remembered the night when her petite body lay unconscious in the net. For the wire on which she worked was really charged as the announcer had claimed. The act was risky. It was genuine— no fake.

Forget that I am a press agent, because the story of the thing is true, on my honor as a man.

WE OF the circus know that about once every so often the public must have a thrill in their bill of entertainment. Human nature stays pretty much the same from year to year. The Romans had gladiatorial combats, and the old barons and such, knightly tournaments. Folks got hurt in those affairs.

Nowadays people like to see men and women go up in balloons and jump off with a few yards of canvas between them and kingdom come, or else see a loop-the-loop, or an airman fly upside down— anything where a mishap will mean sudden death. I don’t know why, but it’s so. You know it.

And so we amusement-venders have to pull a dangerous stunt now and then. That is how Pitkin came to dope out the “Butterfly” in the first place. He was our electrician. We have a new one now. But he fixed this “thriller” and it gave one audience, at least, a sensation not down on the bill.

Pitkin was nuts on electricity— had all sorts of funny notions about what it could do— was always experimenting with the “juice,” and he certainly knew how to make it do what he wanted it to.

He figured that a big act like this, full of blue sparks and things, would make a big hit, and he put it straight up to old man Barnaby himself.

At first Barnaby was shy of the thing. Then his need of a new act and the scheme of the thing itself took hold on him. Pitkin assured him that he could make it as safe as a church during Lent, and he fell for the act and had it built.

Now in itself, the act is all right— if something don’t go wrong. That’s the whole thing with most of the big stunts, however. It’s the thing which sometimes gives the dear public something not down, and it’s because of the off chance of something going wrong that they all hold their breaths and hope. But they’re not hoping it will.

In working, Mitchi wore insulated shoes and her tights were rubber, too. The mouthpiece of her pulley was made of soft rubber into which she bit. Unless she were to brush the wire with her naked arms or her face she was pretty safe.

She had to be quick at the net, of course, so as to hit it right and not fall against the wire. But that’s nothing much for the trained acrobat which she was.

Still, when it came to getting a woman for the act after it was built, Pitkin and Barnaby had some trouble, until they picked up Mitchi Maya out of an aerial troupe.

She’d been with the show for some time and was about the neatest little gymnast you ever saw. She had blue eyes like the flowers of wild flax, and a little straight nose, and a clear, fine skin, with a figure as supple and pliant as a spring. And she had a nerve to match her good looks, which isn’t always the rule by a long shot.

The old Hungarian who was head of the aerial troupe had picked her up as a baby, adopted and trained her, and he always kept her with him. There was some story about a widowed mother in the old country, and I know Mitchi used to send money somewhere over there.

Well, when she heard about the “Butterfly” going begging for a woman, I guess she got a bug she could save a lot more money out of the job. They pay big for such stunts. She thought if she earned enough she could get the old dame over here and sort of look after her first hand instead of by correspondence.

First off she had a long powwow with the old Magyar who had raised her, and though he put up some kick about her leaving his act, he gave in in the end like we all do for a pretty woman. Next she goes to the “old man” and says she’ll sign on for the big bill; and the first thing we knew Pitkin and she were working the thing up between shows and before performances, after the big top was up.

The act created a good deal of excitement, even among our crowd themselves. I remember we all stood around mighty shaky the first time it got a try-out.

Some of the women got pretty pale the first time that little kid stepped out on that hell-spitting wire in her little pink tights, and I know I felt sort of lumpy in the throat myself.

But Mitchi was as cool as a nice icy grapefruit, and she got by with the trial in great shape. Then, too, Pitkin swore there wasn’t any real danger.

He explained all about it. It seems that the balancing-wand she carried, with a big brass knob on the end, was a sort of safety device. At least that is what I gathered from his line of talk. He said the knob collected all the surplus electricity which wasn’t taken care of by her shoes and suit.

It was something like some sort of jar— Leyden he called it. Anyway, as I understood it, it was a sort of fancy lightning-rod she carried, which caught up all the diffused currents and made her safe. As for the slide, it only lasted a few seconds, and the rubber mouthpiece was built so that she couldn’t get hurt.

Still, it sure looked fierce to see that kid frolicking around on the thing. It gave me the willies the first time, and it sort of gets me fussed up now and again, even now. You see I can’t just forget what happened— once.

AFTER the trial we all congratulated them, and Mitchi laughed, with her little red mouth open so you could see her strong white teeth. She said it was a lot easier in fact than the trapeze act of the old Magyar’s she had left. As for Pitkin, he grunted and let it go at that. Nobody expected anything else from him.

He was a funny fellow, dark as Mitchi was light, and wiry, with a sort of sallow skin and a great mop of black hair which he wore so long it curled up at the back like a duck’s tail. He had black eyes, or at least black-brown, and a half-way discouraged mustache. By his own tell he was a Russian who had left the old homestead on the jump, about a hose-length ahead of a Siberian excursion the Czar was getting up for some undesirable “cits.”

Pitkin made a getaway and beat the police to the frontier. He’d been what he called a student with progressive thinks in his tank. He had a sort of slow, quiet way about him and wasn’t much of a mixer. He’d rather get off by himself and mope around half a day than join a friendly gabfest or a game of cards. But he sure was studious when it came to using the “juice” for funny effects.

Oh, he was bright all right— only, to look at the chap, you wouldn’t ever have thought he had a live wire of feeling coiled up in himself. He just gloomed around and we rather let him alone, most of the time.

But he was human under all his reserve— human in a wild, untrained sort of way, for all his being a student. Dogs, you know, are said to be domesticated wolves, and Pitkin was human the same way that a wolf is a dog.

I fancy the Czar was right— the chap wasn’t safe to run with ordinary mutts like the rest of our crowd. We found that out later, too, and it all came about through the butterfly act.

Being with Mitchi like he was, in trying out the act and working it up he saw a lot of the girl. As a matter of fact I don’t blame him for getting stuck on that pretty little kid. She was pretty, and game, and on top of that she was a sweet-dispositioned little thing and a prime favorite with our bunch.

The upshot of it was that the Russky fell head over heels in love and wanted to get married right away. Mitchi told him straight out that she didn’t care for him that way and that she wouldn’t marry any man unless she loved him. He took it mighty badly and grew more sullen than ever.

He was one of those people who have to have what they want, no matter how they get it; and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Every now and then he’d come back with his proposal. And each time he got the same answer he grew a trifle more grouchy about it. He used to go mooning around with his big eyes, black and mournful, except when he was looking at Mitchi, and then they seemed to snap, and dance, and sparkle.

I’ve seen him stand and eye her, and after a while spread out his fingers like claws and shut them as if he imagined he could grab her and drag her to him. He’d get a sort of hungry wolf-look on him at times like that.

But Pitkin wasn’t the only person who had found Mitchi attractive. Before she left her own to go into Pitkin’s act, Mitchi had been a member of a Hungarian family. It wasn’t a family, really, like some of them are, but a bunch the old Magyar who ran it had picked up here and there and trained. One of them was a young fellow named Collins whom the old man had grabbed just before Barnaby signed the troupe.

He was a mighty good aerialist, was Tom Collins, but instead of a Hungarian he was Irish, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a mighty well set-up figure. Before she left the act he did one of those flying swings and catches with Mitchi. One of the fellows would grab her by the heels and swing head downward with her. After a bit he’d let go and toss her to Tom, who was hanging by his knees from his bar.

It was a trick calling for a cool head and a sure eye for distance, because the Magyar people worked without a net, and it’s a long ways from the bars to the ground. Their apparatus was placed ’way up toward the canvas of the big top, higher even than the top of the tower for the Butterfly number, and a miss would have spelled good night for Mitchi. Tom, like Pitkin, was human— in a more human fashion. He was a good old-dog-Tray sort of human, though his nerve showed up all right when it was needed and made him a bit of the wolf for a time.

You can’t expect a man to go on catching a pretty girl in his arms twice a day for months, without noticing what sort of a girl she is. Collins got so he had a hungry look in his eyes, too, those days.

He had a rather romantic respect for the girl, which made his love a wholly different thing from Pitkin’s. Just the same we folks knew he was crazy about her, and Pitkin knew it, too— trust a man like him to sense it!

The result was that one day when Mitchi tinned him down pretty sharply and told him to cut out his nagging in the future, he up and accused her of liking Collins better than she did him.

Mitchi rather lost her head for a minute and told him he was a pretty good guesser, though up to that time, as I know now, Tom had never toldher a word about how he felt. I guess maybe the girl spoke on impulse, right out of her heart. She’d had a chance to notice big-hearted Tom, all right, the same as he had her, and she was a lot nearer his age and more his sort.

Anyway that’s what she said, and Pitkin blew up. He swore that before Tom should have her he’d kill him, and added, if that wasn’t enough he’d kill her.

Mitchi told him to stop talking foolish because Tom hadn’t showed any signs of wantifig to marry anybody that she knew of; and she certainly wouldn’t marry a man unless he asked her, and not always then.

But Pitkin was too crazy mad to have any sense.

“You want to marry zat peeg, Collins!” he sputtered. “You haf say eet—but you s’all not. I swear it. Me you s’all marry an’ no uzzer. Say zat you weel marry me, Mitchi, or I s’all keel zis Collins. I weel keel— keel— even you, Mitchi, my heart— even you!”

He lifted his hands and, clutching into his mane of black hair, waggled his head around and groaned.

At least that’s what the ringmaster, who happened to be passing says he did. The ringmaster jumped in and called him down pretty swift, and he moped off.

OF COURSE the thing leaked during the day, and Tom heard all about it. That night in the trapping-room, while everybody was dressing, he walked over to the Russian right before the whole male end of the show and put it to him straight, to let the girl alone. Of course he didn’t mention Mitchi’s name—  Tom wouldn’t— but we all knew what he meant.

“Look here, Pitkin,” he began. “I’ve heard a lot of stuff you’ve pulled about bumpin’ me off. Now that’s all right. Any time you want to get busy— why, start. But that ain’t all. I ain’t goin’ to mention names, but I’m hep to what’s eatin’ you, my boy, and I want to tell you that maybe that sort of work goes where you come from, but it’s too raw for over here. You want to be careful how you spill any more chatter like that while you’re runnin’ with this bunch, bo.”

For a minute Pitkin didn’t answer. He stood with his black eyes snapping, breathing hard, and a look on him like a dog getting ready to jump at your throat, then—

“I say w’at I mean, Misser Collins,” he got out between gasps.

Tom gave him back stare for stare.

“I hope not, Pitkin,” he says rather slow, “because if I hear of your trying any more of this hazing— of these threats— oh, not about me, Pitkin— but on somebody else— I’ll break your-neck.”

Pitkin yelled out in Russian and jumped for him. I was there and saw it. Tom just put out a hand and shoved him back. The boy wasn’t looking for trouble.

After a bit we got Pitkin quieted down and the thing blew over for the night; but as it happened later Tom was a bit of a prophet without really meaning to be.

When he was dressed for his act, which went on before Mitchi’s, Tom hunted her up, however, and cautioned her to be careful of the Russian, and told her, if she found herself needing help, to call on him. Mother Boone, our “circus mother,” says they talked mighty low for a spell after that, and that Mitchi laughed in a rather embarrassed fashion and ran back into the women’s section of the tent, while Tom walked off whistling in a rather self-satisfied way.

After that Mitchi began to spend a lot of time with Collins, and Pitkin got so that he went around muttering and mumbling to himself. I think he really was touched a little. It’s the only way I can explain the thing he planned to do. I noticed, too, that Tom used to watch the Russian every time the act went off after that.

The aerial act with which he worked, although beginning before the butterfly, stopped while the big act was on. Tom’s bar was nearest the tower, perhaps twenty feet away and higher than its top.

Well, he’d sit on his trapeze during the interruption and watch every move the Russian made, and though none of us knew it then, he had planned it all out in case anything should happen while the butterfly act was on.

We made a couple of jumps after the two men had their run-in in the trapping-room, and nothing happened. Everything went smooth, and most of us had about let the matter slip out of our minds. And then the thing hit us like a shock of Pitkin’s own “juice” and knocked us off our pins.

WE WERE playing a two-day stand and the business was tremendous. Every performance packed the big top to the canvas. The Butterfly was simply going immense.

It was the last night of the stand. Collins was dressing for his turn when Pitkin rushed into the trapping-room and began to rummage about in his own trunk like a dog clawing for a buried bone. All the time he was mumbling away and sort of chuckling to himself.

At the time Tom didn’t give much attention to him, but afterward he remembered and spoke of it to me.

Tom finished dressing and went out to the fly of the big top to wait for his troupe’s signal. There he found Mitchi, wrapped in her cloak, waiting for the Russian to join her before they should get their call. Quite as a matter of course, Tom stopped and spoke to the girl.

She seemd rather nervous and hardly herself. He asked her what was the matter.

“I’m afraid, Tom,” she told him without any feminine fencing. She’d come to trust Collins pretty fully. “Boris—” Pitkin’s name was Boris— “has been awfully queer all day. He’s asked me to marry him twice since morning.” She laughed in a forced fashion, and went on: “That’s a record. Once a day has been his limit. But ever since the last time, this afternoon, he’s gone around muttering to himself— and I don’t like his looks. Honest, Tom, I don’t believe he’s just right. I believe he’s crazyꟷ”

Collins grinned.

“He’s crazy about you, all right,” he said.

“I meant crazy— about me,” said Mitchi. “And he’s been threatening again, Tom. He says— he’ll kill you— unless I do what he wants.”

“I ain’t nervous,” Tom assured her. “He talks too much. Your bad man talks after, not before. But if he don’t stop pesterin’ you, why— I’ll have to marry you myself.”

Mitchi laughed in a nervous fashion.

“Then if he keeps it up I’ll have a right to break his neck,” Collins went on, rather carried away by his words and the girl’s demeanor and nearness, and his own love for every atom of her. “I told him I would once.”

Mitchi gave him a smile.

“It’s all right to joke,” said she, “but I’m really nervous tonight, Tom. If you’d seen Boris’ eyesꟷ”

Tom rather lost his head for a minute.

“I ain’t joking, Mitchi,” he informed her in a way which brought her eyes up to his. “An’ I tell you what you do. After tonight go to the old man and put it to him straight. He’ll call this guy off or tie a can on him. Or— if you’d rather, marry me, Mitchi. As my wife, your bughouse Russky wouldn’t have a leg left to stand on. Can’t you think of worse things than bein’ Mrs. Collins?”

I don’t know what Mitchi would have answered to that, because just then Tom’s act was called and he had to leave on the jump. Even love has to step down when your number is called in the circus. He joined his troupe, trotted in and was pulled up to his bar.

Later he told me that it wasn’t till after that, when the act was really started, that he really began to feel worried. Then it came to him all at once that something was due to happen.

Just why it should be that night he didn’t know. All along Pitkin’s threats had gone for nothing. In fact Tom rather felt that the man was afraid to start any trouble. But now it hit him all at once that trouble was due.

He says he went through his own act by instinct pure and simple, and all the time something kept telling him to grab a rope and slide down and stop things before the Butterfly was called.

But he didn’t. Circus people are pretty loyal to the show, as a class. They know the performance has to go on, no matter what happens; and most of them will suffer a lot of pain, or worry, or sickness, before they’ll drop out of their act or make a holler of any sort. And the Butterfly is the big number, of course.

Tom told himself he was foolish; that just because he loved the girl so much he was nervous about her; that Pitkin was merely trying to scare her into the marriage, and he felt better— or at least he decided there was no cause for worry. Still, all the time he was worrying.

He says now that he knew something was coming, only he wouldn’t admit it to himself because he couldn’t believe anybody would attempt a thing as fiendish as the thing Pitkin did.

Just the same, when Mitchi and Pitkin came in, Tom watched the girl climb the tower, and all his love took hold on him afresh. She was little, and slender, and sweet, and he could see her face looked worried, too.

When the band stopped, and the megaphone barked, and his own and all the other acts in the rings came to a pause, he says now, he had all he could do to keep from yelling out and telling them to stop right there.

All he did do, however, was to draw himself up and sit on his bar, watching Pitkin and Mitchi’s little pink figure, with every muscle in him tight with watching.

The act began all right. Mitchi did her stunts on the wire and came back for the slide. Pitkin took her to the edge after he’d fastened on her wings, and held the mouthpiece for her. They did it that way then, though now she always takes the mouthpiece in her teeth first. And there’s a reason for that.

Well, Pitkin, who always wore rubber gloves, lifted the mouthpiece for her to bite, and Tom saw him speak to her when he did it. Mitchi shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. The Russian frowned and sort of nodded his head.

Mitchi flapped her wings and tilted back her pretty little face. Even then Tom never suspected anything except that Pitkin had proposed again, which he had— the last time, too, as it happened. I guess in his crazy mind he thought he was giving the girl a final chance.

ALL at once Mitchi goes up on her toes and grips the rubber bit in her mouth, and then, right before the whole tent, she stiffens and seems to stretch out in a sort of spasm. And before anybody could lift a hand, Pitkin pushes her off the tower and down she goes.

You know how a current will produce a spasm of the muscles. Well, that’s what happened. When the current hit her through the jaws, they locked into the rubber and she couldn’t let go or fall off. Pitkin knew that and figured on it to give the current time to kill her.

She flashed along the wire, hit the net and lay still under the wire, with the bit still fast in her teeth. And she never moved.

It sure was awful. When she hit, some of the lamps she wore broke and cut through her tights, but she never felt it. She just lay there and cooked. She was unconscious.

I gave one look at her poor little huddled shape in the net and turned away— sick.

Then I looked up at the tower. Pitkin stood there with his arms folded and his head back, and the most awful, hellish grin on his face I ever saw.

The whole tent was in an uproar. Several men ran toward the tower as if to climb up and shut off the current. Women were screaming and fainting all over the place, and men were yelling and cursing in excitement.

The ringmaster was trying to prevent a panic in the crowd. Through the megaphone he began barking at Pitkin over the shrieks and yells:

“Turn off the juice! Turn off the juice!”

Pitkin seemed to wake up at that, and looked down. The smile on his devil’s face got wider, it seemed. He waved a hand toward poor little Mitchi and pointed to himself, as if to say he had meant to do it, and had succeeded, and defied us to do anything in time to save the life he was taking.

By that time one of the boys was half way up the tower, but he never would have made it in time. Even if he’d got up, he’d have had to fight Pitkin before he could reach the switch.

Right there the band began playing, by orders, to quiet the crowd. It seemed ghastly, too. There they were banging out ragtime, with that girl burning to death before everybody’s eyes. I felt sick all over, believe me. It was fierce.

IT WAS Tom Collins, the man who really loved her, who saw the only way out and took it on the jump. While we were yellmg at Pitkin to cut off the current, and he was grinning his hellish triumph, Tom got busy. He let himself down from his bar by his arms and began to swing.

He gave himself a pretty strong momentum and forced himself to wait until it was sufficient. Then he let go. I’ve mentioned that his bar was higher than the tower and twenty feet beyond it.

When Collins let go, he came down in a straight foot-dive for the top of the tower itself, where Pitkin stood waving his hands and beginning a sort of fiendish clog-dance, right on the edge.

Pitkin’s back was toward Tom and he didn’t see him coming. I did. I saw him leave the bar and come down like an arrow, holding both feet together. Right in the middle of Pitkin’s insane dancing Tom hit the tower, tried to straighten up, and staggered, lurching full into the Russian’s back.

Pitkin yelled out once. He screamed like a wounded animal sometimes will— a wild, hoarse, unhuman-like screech. Then, thrown completely off his feet by Collins’ impact, he plunged out from the tower’s edge and fell over and over into the ring below, to lie awfully still with his black head bent back under his shoulders.

Collins paid no attention to that. He was at the switch. When he bumped into Pitkin it stopped his own fall and straightened him up. In one leap he reached the switchboard and pulled out the lever.

The lamps sputtered and died, and poor little Mitchi relaxed in the net. I think everybody in the tent sighed at once. It sounded like a gust of wind.

Two of the tent-men were already swarming up ropes to the net, and Tom was racing down the tower. By the time they lowered Mitchi over the edge of the net, he was there to take her in his arms. He caught her and cuddled her up on his breast and kissed her before the whole tent. Then he turned and raced for the exit.

The band was still playing and the other acts started again at the ringmaster’s signal. Two hands picked Pitkin up and lugged him out to the trap-room. Collins with Mitchi in his arms passed me at the fly.

There was a wild, fierce look in the boy’s eyes. Just for that once I saw the old primitive, human-wolf strain look out. He gave me a glance and ran on into the woman’s section of the dressing-tent, without so much as by your leave.

I think he’d forgotten everything on earth but the woman rolled in against his heart. He laid her down and began pumping her arms up and back and down again, like you do those of a man who has drowned. All at once he spoke:

“Get a doctor— a doctor— for God’s sake!

Ain’t anybody got any sense? Get a doctor! She ain’t dead! She won’t die! I won’t let her, I tell you! Get a doctor— quick!”

Some of the girls and Mother Boone tried to get him to let them take charge, but he wouldn’t. As it happened, though, there was a doctor in the crowd, and by that time he was coming into the dressing-tent door. He came in and took hold in good shape as soon as Tom would let him.

At first the boy was so rattled he wouldn’t let anybody touch her; just knelt there beside her little pink body and snarled, and worked her arms up and down.

I went up and told him the man was a physician, and because he knew me he listened. He looked up at the doctor; then staggered to his feet.

“Take me away, Bill,” he mumbled.

I took him by the arm and led him outside the door of the girls’ section.

There he balked. He wouldn’t go a step farther. We hung around for a good two hours, and though everything else was loaded up for the jump, we didn’t strike that tent till Mitchi could be moved. Old Barnaby sure acted white about that. A delay means a lot to show-folks; but Barnaby sure did the handsome. I guess he felt sort of guilty about having let Pitkin fix up the act in the first place, for he paid Mitchi’s hospital-bill.

IT WAS about one o’clock when the doctor came out and says he thinks she’ll pull through with good care, and that he’s going to call an ambulance. When he heard that, Tom began to laugh all at once.

“I told you she wouldn’t die!” he said between chuckles to me. “I wouldn’t let her! She’s mine! But Pitkin died, didn’t he, Bill? I told him I’d break his-neck!”

And with that Tom dropped to the floor in a genuine faint.

He stayed behind, too, when the show went on. All the four weeks Mitchi was in the hospital he hung around. By the time she was ready to come back to the show, the two had decided to sign each other up for a life-engagement. They went off and got married, and Mitchi came back as Mrs. Collins.

But they work under her name. They bill as a brother-and-sister act, and Tom Collins handles the switch.

As for Pitkin, his neck was certainly broken. I think he deserved it for what he did that night. I’ve mentioned that the man was an electrical expert, and he had planned this thing all out. He’d taken an extra pulley and mouthpiece and soaked the whole thing in a strong copper solution for days.

That night he switched pulleys and put on his copper-loaded one. When Mitchi bit it the current jumped into her like lightning. That, by the way, is why she takes the bite now before her wings go on.

If any josher tried that stunt again, she’d taste it or drop on the tower, at least, even if Tom didn’t get it first in his bare hands. He doesn’t wear gloves. Tom Collins is sure mighty careful of his wife.

We picked up a new electrician, and nobody wept for Pitkin. Even the coroner, when he’d heard all the evidence we could give, decided his death was due to accidental causes, and nobody kicked on that.

____________________

14: The Banshee

Anonymous

Stories by English Authors, Ireland; 1896

OF all the superstitions prevalent amongst the natives of Ireland at any period, past or present, there is none so grand or fanciful, none which has been so universally assented to or so cordially cherished, as the belief in the existence of the banshee. There are very few, however remotely acquainted with Irish life or Irish history, but must have heard or read of the Irish banshee; still, as there are different stories and different opinions afloat respecting this strange being, I think a little explanation concerning her appearance, functions, and habits will not be unacceptable to my readers. The banshee, then, is said to be an immaterial and immortal being, attached, time out of mind, to various respectable and ancient families in Ireland, and is said always to appear to announce, by cries and lamentations, the death of any member of that family to which she belongs. She always comes at night, a short time previous to the death of the fated one, and takes her stand outside, convenient to the house, and there utters the most plaintive cries and lamentations, generally in some unknown language, and in a tone of voice resembling a human female. She continues her visits night after night, unless vexed or annoyed, until the mourned object dies, and sometimes she is said to continue about the house for several nights after. Sometimes she is said to appear in the shape of a most beautiful young damsel, and dressed in the most elegant and fantastic garments ; but her general appearance is in the likeness of a very old woman, of small stature and bending and decrepit form, enveloped in a winding-sheet or grave-dress, and her long, white, hoary hair waving over her shoulders and descending to her feet. At other times she is dressed in the costume of the middle ages the different articles of her clothing being of the richest material and of a sable hue. She is very shy and easily irritated, and, when once annoyed or vexed, she flies away, and never returns during the same generation. When the death of the person whom she mourns is contingent, or to occur by unforeseen accident, she is particularly agitated and troubled in her appearance, and unusually loud and mournful in her lamentations. Some would fain have it that this strange being is actuated by a feeling quite inimical to the interests of the family which she haunts, and that she comes with joy and triumph to announce their misfortunes. This opinion, however, is rejected by most people, who imagine her their most devoted friend, and that she was, at some remote period, a member of the family, and once existed on the earth in life and loveliness. It is not every Irish family can claim the honour of an attendant banshee ; they must be respectably descended, and of ancient line, to have any just pretensions to a warning spirit. However, she does not appear to be influenced by the difference of creed or clime, provided there be no other impediment, as several Protestant families of Norman and Anglo-Saxon origin boast of their own banshee; and to this hour several noble and distinguished families in the country feel proud of the surveillance of that mysterious being. Neither is she influenced by the circumstances of rank or fortune, as she is oftener found frequenting the cabin of the peasant than the baronial mansion of the lord of thousands. Even the humble family to which the writer of this tale belongs has long claimed the honourable appendage of a banshee; and it may, perhaps, excite an additional interest in my readers when I inform them that my present story is associated with her last visit to that family.

SOME YEARS AGO there dwelt in the vicinity of Mountrath, in the Queen's County, a farmer, whose name for obvious reasons we shall not at present disclose. He never was married, and his only domestics were a servant-boy and an old woman, a housekeeper, who had long been a follower or dependent of the family. He was born and educated in the Roman Catholic Church, but on arriving at manhood, for reasons best known to himself, he abjured the tenets of that creed and conformed to the doctrines of Protestantism. However, in after years he seemed to waver, and refused going to church, and by his manner of living seemed to favour the dogmas of infidelity or atheism. He was rather dark and reserved in his manner, and oftentimes sullen and gloomy in his temper; and this, joined with his well-known disregard of religion, served to render him somewhat unpopular amongst his neighbours and acquaintances. However, he was in general respected, and was never insulted or annoyed. He was considered as an honest, inoffensive man, and as he was well supplied with firearms and ammunition, in the use of which he was well practised, having, in his early days, served several years in a yeomanry corps, few liked to disturb him, even had they been so disposed. He was well educated, and decidedly hostile to every species of superstition, and was constantly jeering his old housekeeper, who was extremely superstitious, and pretended to be entirely conversant with every matter connected with witchcraft and the fairy world. He seldom darkened a neighbour's door, and scarcely ever asked any one to enter his, but generally spent his leisure hours in reading, of which he was extremely fond, or in furbishing his firearms, to which he was still more attached, or in listening to and laughing at the wild and blood-curdling stories of old Moya, with which her memory abounded. Thus he spent his time until the period at which our tale commences, when he was about fifty years of age, and old Moya, the housekeeper, had become extremely feeble, stooped, and of very ugly and forbidding exterior.

One morning in the month of November, A.D. 1818, this man arose before daylight, and on coming out of the apartment where he slept he was surprised at finding old Moya in the kitchen, sitting over the raked-up fire, and smoking her tobacco-pipe in a very serious and meditative mood.

"Arrah, Moya," said he, "what brings you out of your bed so early?"

"Och musha, I dunna," replied the old woman; "I was so uneasy all night that I could not sleep a wink, and I got up to smoke a blast, thinkin' that it might drive away the weight that 's on my heart."

"And what ails you, Moya? Are you sick, or what came over you?"

"No, the Lord be praised! I am not sick, but my heart is sore, and there 's a load on my spirits that would kill a hundred."

"Maybe you were dreaming, or something that way," said the man, in a bantering tone, and suspecting, from the old woman's grave manner, that she was labouring under some mental delusion.

"Dreaming!" reechoed Moya, with a bitter sneer; "ay, dreaming. Och, I wish to God I was only dreaming; but I am very much afraid it is worse than that, and that there is trouble and misfortune hanging over uz."

"And what makes you think so, Moya?" asked he, with a half-suppressed smile.

Moya, aware of his well-known hostility to every species of superstition, remained silent, biting her lips and shaking her gray head prophetically.

"Why don't you answer me, Moya?" again asked the man.

"Och," said Moya, "I am heart-scalded to have it to tell you, and I know you will laugh at me; but, say what you will, there is something bad over uz, for the banshee was about the house all night, and she has me almost frightened out of my wits with her shouting and bawling."

The man was aware of the banshee's having been long supposed to haunt his family, but often scouted that supposition; yet, as it was some years since he had last heard of her visiting the place, he was not prepared for the freezing announcement of old Moya. He turned as pale as a corpse, and trembled excessively; at last, recollecting himself, he said, with a forced smile :

"And how do you know it was the banshee, Moya? "

"How do I know? " reiterated Moya, tauntingly. "Didn't I see and hear her several times during the night? and more than that, did n't I hear the dead-coach rattling round the house, and through the yard, every night at midnight this week back, as if it would tear the house out of the foundation?"

The man smiled faintly ; he was frightened, yet was ashamed to appear so. He again said:

"And did you ever see the banshee before, Moya? "

"Yes," replied Moya, "often. Didn't I see her when your mother died? Did n't I see her when your brother was drowned? and sure, there was n't one of the family that went these sixty years that I did not both see and hear her."

"And where did you see her, and what way did she look to-night?"

"I saw her at the little window over my bed; a kind of reddish light shone round the house; I looked up, and there I saw her old, pale face and glassy eyes looking in, and she rocking herself to and fro, and clapping her little, withered hands, and crying as if her very heart would break."

"Well, Moya, it 's all imagination; go, now, and prepare my breakfast, as I want to go to Maryborough to-day, and I must be home early."

Moya trembled; she looked at him imploringly and said: "For Heaven's sake, John, don't go today; stay till some other day, and God bless you; for if you go to-day I would give my oath there will something cross you that 's bad."

"Nonsense, woman!" said he; "make haste and get me my breakfast."

Moya, with tears in her eyes, set about getting the breakfast ready; and whilst she was so employed John was engaged in making preparations for his journey.

Having now completed his other arrangements, he sat down to breakfast, and, having concluded it, he arose to depart.

Moya ran to the door, crying loudly; she flung herself on her knees, and said: "John, John, be advised. Don't go to-day; take my advice; I know more of the world than you do, and I see plainly that if you go you will never enter this door again with your life."

Ashamed to be influenced by the drivellings of an old cullough, he pushed her away with his hand, and, going out to the stable, mounted his horse and departed. Moya followed him with her eyes whilst in sight; and when she could no longer see him, she sat down at the fire and wept bitterly.

It was a bitter cold day, and the farmer, having finished his business in town, feeling himself chilly, went into a public-house to have a tumbler of punch and feed his horse ; there he met an old friend, who would not part with him until he would have another glass with him and a little conversation, as it was many years since they had met before. One glass brought another, and it was almost duskish ere John thought of returning, and, having nearly ten miles to travel, it would be dark night before he could get home. Still his friend would not permit him to go, but called for more liquor, and it was far advanced in the night before they parted. John, however, had a good horse, and, having had him well fed, he did not spare whip or spur, but dashed along at a rapid pace through the gloom and silence of the winter's night, and had already distanced the town upward of five miles, when, on arriving at a very desolate part of the road, a gun-shot, fired from behind the bushes, put an end to his mortal existence. Two strange men, who had been at the same public-house in Maryborough drinking, observing that he had money and learning the road that he was to travel, conspired to rob and murder him, and waylaid him in this lonely spot for that horrid purpose.

Poor Moya did not go to bed that night, but sat at the fire, every moment impatiently expecting his return. Often did she listen at the door to try if she could hear the tramp of the horse's footsteps approaching. But in vain ; no sound met her ear except the sad wail of the night wind, moaning fitfully through the tall bushes which surrounded the ancient dwelling, or the sullen roar of a little dark river, which wound its way through the lowlands at a small distance from where she stood. Tired with watching, at length she fell asleep on the hearth-stone ; but that sleep was disturbed and broken, and frightful and appalling dreams incessantly haunted her imagination.

At length the darksome morning appeared struggling through the wintry clouds, and Moya again opened the door to look out. But what was her dismay when she found the horse standing at the stable door without his rider, and the saddle all besmeared with clotted blood. She raised the death-cry; the neighbours thronged round, and it was at once declared that the hapless man was robbed and murdered. A party on horseback immediately set forward to seek him, and on arriving at the fatal spot he was found stretched on his back in the ditch, his head perforated with shot and slugs, and his body literally immersed in a pool of blood. On examining him it was found that his money was gone, and a valuable gold watch and appendages abstracted from his pocket. His remains were conveyed home, and, after having been waked the customary time, were committed to the grave of his ancestors in the little green churchyard of the village.

Having no legitimate children, the nearest heir to his property was a brother, a cabinet-maker, who resided in London. A letter was accordingly despatched to the brother announcing the sad catastrophe, and calling on him to come and take possession of the property; and two men were appointed to guard the place until he should arrive.

The two men delegated to act as guardians, or, as they are technically termed, "keepers," were old friends and comrades of the deceased, and had served with him in the same yeomanry corps. Jack O'Malley was a Roman Catholic a square, stout-built, and handsome fellow, with a pleasant word for every one, and full of that gaiety, vivacity, and nonchalance for which the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland are so particularly distinguished. He was now about forty-five years of age, sternly attached to the dogmas of his religion, and always remarkable for his revolutionary and anti-British principles. He was brave as a lion, and never quailed before a man ; but, though caring so little for a living man, he was extremely afraid of a dead one, and would go ten miles out of his road at night to avoid passing a "rath," or "haunted bush." Harry Taylor, on the other hand, was a staunch Protestant; a tall, genteel-looking man, of proud and imperious aspect, and full of reserve and hauteur the natural consequence of a consciousness of political and religious ascendency and superiority of intelligence and education, which so conspicuously marked the demeanour of the Protestant peasantry of those days. Harry, too, loved his glass as well as Jack, but was of a more peaceful disposition, and as he was well educated and intelligent, he was utterly opposed to superstition, and laughed to scorn the mere idea of ghosts, goblins, and fairies. Thus Jack and Harry were diametrically opposed to each other in every point except their love of the cruiskeen, yet they never failed to seize every opportunity of being together; and, although they often blackened each other's eyes in their political and religious disputes, yet their quarrels were always amicably settled, and they never found themselves happy but in each other's society.

It was now the sixth or seventh night that Jack and Harry, as usual, kept their lonely watch in the kitchen of the murdered man. A large turf fire blazed brightly on the hearth, and on a bed of straw in the ample chimney-corner was stretched old Moya in a profound sleep. On the hearthstone, between the two friends, stood a small oak table, on which was placed a large decanter of whisky, a jug of boiled water, and a bowl of sugar; and, as if to add an idea of security to that of comfort, on one end of the table were placed in saltier a formidable-looking blunderbuss and a brace of large brass pistols. Jack and his comrade perpetually renewed their acquaintance with the whisky-bottle, and laughed and chatted and recounted 'the adventures of their young days with as much hilarity as if the house which now witnessed their mirth never echoed to the cry of death or blood. In the course of conversation Jack mentioned the incident of the strange appearance of the banshee, and expressed a hope that she would not come that night to disturb their carouse.

"Banshee the devil!" shouted Harry; "how superstitious you papists are! I would like to see the phiz of any man, dead or alive, who dare make his appearance here to-night." And, seizing the blunderbuss, and looking wickedly at Jack, he vociferated, "By Hercules, I would drive the contents of this through their sowls who dare annoy us."

"Better for you to shoot your mother than fire at the banshee, anyhow," remarked Jack.

"Psha!" said Harry, looking contemptuously at his companion. "I would think no more of riddling the old jade's hide than I would of throwing off this tumbler;" and, to suit the action to the word, he drained off another bumper of whisky-punch.

"Jack," says Harry, "now that we are in such prime humour, will you give us a song? "

"With all the veins of my heart," says Jack. "What will it be?"

"Anything you please; your will must be my pleasure," answered Harry.

Jack, after coughing and clearing his pipes, chanted forth, in a bold and musical voice, a rude rigmarole called " The Royal Blackbird," which, although of no intrinsic merit, yet, as it expressed sentiments hostile to British connection and British government and favourable to the house of Stewart, was very popular amongst the Catholic peasantry of Ireland, whilst, on the contrary, it was looked upon by the Protestants as highly offensive and disloyal. Harry, however, wished his companion too well to oppose the song, and he quietly awaited its conclusion.

"Bravo, Jack," said Harry, as soon as the song was ended; "that you may never lose your wind."

"In the king's name now I board you for another song," says Jack.

Harry, without hesitation, recognised his friend's right to demand a return, and he instantly trolled forth, in a deep, sweet, and sonorous voice, the following:

SONG.

"Ho, boys, I have a song divine!

Come, let us now in concert join,

And toast the bonny banks of Boyne

The Boyne of ' Glorious Memory.'

"On Boyne's famed banks our fathers bled;

Boyne's surges with their blood ran red;

And from the Boyne our foemen fled

Intolerance, chains, and slavery.

"Dark superstition's blood-stained sons

Pressed on, but 'crack ' went William's guns,

And soon the gloomy monster runs

Fell, hydra-headed bigotry.

"Then fill your glasses high and fair,

Let shouts of triumph rend the air,

Whilst Georgy fills the regal chair

We'll never bow to Popery."

Jack, whose countenance had, from the commencement of the song, indicated his aversion to the sentiments it expressed, now lost all patience at hearing his darling "Popery" impugned, and, seizing one of the pistols which lay on the table and whirling it over his comrade's head, swore vehemently that he would "fracture his skull if he did not instantly drop that blackguard Orange lampoon."

"Aisy, avhic," said Harry, quietly pushing away the upraised arm; "I did not oppose your bit of treason awhile ago, and besides, the latter end of my song is more calculated to please you than to irritate your feelings."

Jack seemed pacified, and Harry continued his strain.

"And fill a bumper to the brim

A flowing one and drink to him

Who, let the world go sink or swim,

Would arm for Britain's liberty.

"No matter what may be his hue,

Or black, or white, or green, or blue,

Or Papist, Paynim, or Hindoo,

We'll drink to him right cordially."

Jack was so pleased with the friendly turn which the latter part of Harry's song took that he joyfully stretched out his hand, and even joined in chorus to the concluding stanza.

The fire had now decayed on the hearth, the whisky-bottle was almost emptied, and the two sentinels, getting drowsy, put out the candle and laid down their heads to slumber. The song and the laugh and the jest were now hushed, and no sound was to be heard but the incessant "click, click," of the clock in the inner room and the deep, heavy breathing of old Moya in the chimney-corner.

They had slept they knew not ow long when the old hag awakened with a wild shriek. She jumped out of bed, and crouched between the men; they started up, and asked her what had happened.

"Oh!" she exclaimed; "the banshee, the banshee! Lord have mercy on us ! she is come again, and I never heard her so wild and outrageous before."

Jack O'Malley readily believed old Moya's tale; so did Harry, but he thought it might be some one who was committing some depredation on the premises. They both listened attentively, but could hear nothing; they opened the kitchen door, but all was still; they looked abroad; it was a fine, calm night, and myriads of twinkling stars were burning in the deep-blue heavens. They proceeded around the yard and hay-yard ; but all was calm and lonely, and no sound saluted their ears but the shrill barking of some neighbouring cur, or the sluggish murmuring of the little tortuous river in the distance. Satisfied that "all was right," they again went in, replenished the expiring fire, and sat down to finish whatever still remained in the whisky-bottle.

They had not sat many minutes when a wild, unearthly cry was heard without.

"The banshee again," said Moya, faintly. Jack O'Malley's soul sank within him; Harry started up and seized the blunderbuss; Jack caught his arm. "No, no, Harry, you shall not; sit down ; there 's no fear nothing will happen us."

Harry sat down, but still gripped the blunderbuss, and Jack lit his tobacco-pipe, whilst the old woman was on her knees, striking her breast, and repeating her prayers with great vehemence.

The sad cry was again heard, louder and fiercer than before. It now seemed to proceed from the window, and again it appeared as if issuing from the door. At times it would seem as if coming from afar, whilst again it would appear as if coming down the chimney or springing from the ground beneath their feet. Sometimes the cry resembled the low, plaintive wail of a female in distress, and in a moment it was raised to a prolonged yell, loud and furious, and as if coming from a thousand throats ; now the sound resembled a low, melancholy chant, and then was quickly changed to a loud, broken, demoniac laugh. It continued thus, with little intermission, for about a quarter of an hour, when it died away, and was succeeded by a heavy, creaking sound, as if of some large waggon, amidst which the loud tramp of horses' footsteps might be distinguished, accompanied with a strong, rushing wind. This strange noise proceeded round and round the house two or three times, then went down the lane which led to the road, and was heard no more. Jack O'Malley stood aghast, and Harry Taylor, with all his philosophy and scepticism, was astonished and frightened.

"A dreadful night this, Moya," said Jack.

"Yes," said she, "that is the dead-coach; I often heard it before, and have sometimes seen it."

"Seen, did you say?" said Harry; "pray describe it."

"Why," replied the old crone, "it's like any other coach, but twice as big, and hung over with black cloth, and a black coffin on the top of it, and drawn by headless black horses."

"Heaven protect us!" ejaculated Jack.

"It is very strange," remarked Harry.

"But," continued Moya, "it always comes before the death of a person, and I wonder what brought it now, unless it came with the banshee."

"Maybe it 's coming for you," said Harry, with an arch yet subdued smile.

"No, no," she said; "I am none of that family at all at all."

A solemn silence now ensued for a few minutes, and they thought all was vanished, when again the dreadful cry struck heavily on their ears.

"Open the door, Jack," said Harry, "and put out Hector."

Hector was a large and very ferocious mastiff belonging to Jack O'Malley, and always accompanied him wherever he went.

Jack opened the door and attempted to put out the dog, but the poor animal refused to go, and, as his master attempted to force him, howled in a loud and mournful tone.

"You must go," said Harry, and he caught him in his arms and flung him over the half-door. The poor dog was scarcely on the ground when he was whirled aloft into the air by some invisible power, and he fell again to earth lifeless, and the pavement was besmeared with his entrails and blood.

Harry now lost all patience, and again seizing his blunderbuss, he exclaimed: "Come, Jack, my boy, take your pistols and follow me; I have but one life to lose, and I will venture it to have a crack at this infernal demon."

"I will follow you to death's doors," said Jack; "but I would not fire at the banshee for a million of worlds."

Moya seized Harry by the skirts. "Don't go out," she cried; "let her alone while she lets you alone, for an hour's luck never shone on any one that ever molested the banshee."

"Psha, woman!" said Harry, and he pushed away poor Moya contemptuously.

The two men now sallied forth ; the wild cry still continued, and it seemed to issue from amongst some stacks in the hay-yard behind the house. They went round and paused; again they heard the cry, and Harry elevated his blunderbuss.

"Don't fire," said Jack.

Harry replied not; he looked scornfully at Jack, then put his finger on the trigger, and bang away it exploded with a thundering sound. An extraordinary scream was now heard, ten times louder and more terrific than they heard before. Their hair stood erect on their heads, and huge, round drops of sweat ran down their faces in quick succession. A glare of reddish-blue light shone around the stacks; the rumbling of the dead-coach was again heard coming; it drove up to the house, drawn by six headless sable horses, and the figure of a withered old hag, encircled with blue flame, was seen running nimbly across the hay-yard. She entered the ominous carriage, and it drove away with a horrible sound. It swept through the tall bushes which surrounded the house ; and as it disappeared the old hag cast a thrilling scowl at the two men, and waved her fleshless arms at them vengefully. It was soon lost to sight; but the unearthly creaking of the wheels, the tramping of the horses, and the appalling cries of the banshee continued to assail their ears for a considerable time after all had vanished.

The brave fellows now returned to the house; they again made fast the door, and reloaded their arms. Nothing, however, came to disturb them that night, nor from that time forward; and the arrival of the dead man's brother from London, in a few days after, relieved them from their irksome task.

Old Moya did not live long after; she declined from that remarkable night, and her remains were decently interred in the churchyard adjoining the last earthly tenement of the loved family to which she had been so long and so faithfully attached.

The insulted banshee has never since returned; and although several members of that family have since closed their mortal career, still the warning cry was never given; and it is supposed that the injured spirit will never visit her ancient haunts until every one of the existing generation shall have "slept with their fathers."

Jack O'Malley and his friend Harry lived some years after. Their friendship still continued undiminished; like "Tam O'Shanter" and "Souter Johnny," they still continued to love each other like "a very brither"; and like that jovial pair, also, our two comrades were often "fou for weeks thegither," and often over their cruiskeen would they laugh at their strange adventure with the banshee. It is now, however, all over with them too; their race is run, and they are now "tenants of the tomb."

__________________

15: The Amazing Power

Miles J. Breuer

1889-1945

Amazing Stories Jul 1930

WHEN Protessor Grimm laid down his work and decided to go home, he changed into a different man.

“Seven o'clock. Time to quit.” He sighed with regret at having to leave his beloved apparatus. He, picked up some pieces again, fitted them into the big machine, lingered awhile, then tore himself resolutely away.

All day, while he worked in the laboratory, he was keen, alert, full of enthusiasm. His pencil drove swiftly over sheet after sheet of paper, leaving them covered with calculations too abstruse for ordinary mortals, or his eyes and fingers searched busily among the leaves of his library. But, most of the time, he hovered devotedly all around that vast and complex mass of apparatus at one end of the big room.

He had as much energy as the great waterfall whose roar could, just be heard through the windows, and which supplied him with inexhaustible power for his experimental work in intra-atomic physics. His eyes shone brightly; he never seemed to'tire. It was evident that he loved the work.

Then came quitting time. A vacant, discouraged expression came into his face, and his figure drooped, as though there was nothing else in the world for him. He was like a lover driven from the side of his fair lady into the wilderness.

To look at him, as he went slowly down the street, you would think he was one of those dry, lifeless scientists who care for nothing, know of nothing but archaeopteryx or eclipsing variables. The careless hang of his clothes, his unshaven chin and his general air of absent-mindedness seemed to suggest that he was a man so absorbed in his work that, indeed, it was all that existed for him.

But Professor Grimm was not that dry. There was, in fact, a good deal of the adventurous  and romantic in his makeup. What else could account for the wistful look that came into his, eyes, and his lagging steps, when he passed the cinema where exotic scenes from some romantic epic were pictured on the billboards? He almost stopped before the colourful poster depicting the hero, in doublet and hose, defending a lovely lady’s honour with flashing sword; but he pulled himself together, shrugged his shoulders, and resumed his walk homeward.

Again he forgot himself for a moment when a young man and a girl passed him, arm in arm, blissfully unconscious of everything but each other. He hesitated, too, at the window of a travel agency full of views of picturesque scenery and bathing beauties. But each time he braced himself and went on, resolutely.

He reached home dejected and weary. The house was full of bright, resplendent rooms, in one of which was a glittering dinner-table. His wife appeared, a vision of artificial glory, product of all the modern arts designed to enhance feminine beauty, and delightful to look at.

“Hurry, dear,” she said, in a voice that tinkled like a silver bell. “Our guests will be here soon.”

But, to Professor Grimm, the tinkle in her voice was cold and distant; arid the tone of it conveyed to him, if the words did not, that he was late again and that his appearance Would not be presentable to the distinguished social captures his wife expected.

SO IT was every evening, except that sometimes her impatience at his tired condition and unkempt look was scarce concealed. On occasions, he would make his appearance among the guests; on others, he would not. It did not seem to matter, either way, for he was hardly noticed as long as he did not get in the way.

The gaiety always lasted until late, and he would leave the guests and go to bed early, because he had work to do in the morning. His wife would sleep until noon, and he would never see her again until evening, dressed for another function. When they had opportunity for conversation, which was rarely, it was always dominated by her intense social ambitions and a pouting impatience at the work which kept him so occupied, and prevented her from showing him off to her guests.

“I’ll come over to the laboratory one of these days, and smash up those silly machines,” she complained. “You never seem to have any time for me.”

Few readers, perhaps, will take this little story very seriously, but it is none the less delightful for that. And though if may seem to savour of the impossible, we cannot deny that, once we have thoroughly mastered the secrqts of the atom, there will be no bounds to the miraculous things we may accomplish in the laboratory.

If he had not been a scientist, accustomed to shaping intangible ideas and putting them to practical use, he might have retorted that it was her social-climbing nonsense that kept her away from him, and that his work was of more importance. But because he dealt in nebulous things, which did not always materialise, he had to excuse himself by explaining:

“I have a rather big idea to work out, and it needs a lot of time. But, if it does work out, it will bring in a lot of money.”

That usually contented her, for money was necessary for beautiful clothes and entertaining. But Professor Grimm was far from being contented. His wife was no wife at all. He had no constant companion with whom he could share his problems, his ambitions and successes. He had only his work, to which he clung with such tenacity. His researches into the ionisation of solid bodies, and his concrete realisation of perfect high-density gases— these were his wife and love, and took the place of the romance which was missing from his life.

“Still,” he reflected, “perhaps it’s just as well. People who have all they want never give much to life. There is no incentive to further effort. If I were as happy as Puckner is with his wife, going off on one honeymoon after another, I suppose I should never have worked out my Integrator.”

What was this Integrator, which filled the Professor’s days, which occupied his thoughts at night, and at which he worked so enthusiastically? It was a truly astonishing thing, before which its own creator sometimes stood in awe, scarcely able to credit the miraculous powers it vested in him as reward for his strenuous labours.

That day, he had tested it out again, and witnessed its amazing performance. While the huge generators were starting up and the glowing platinum targets were warming, he had sat at his desk working his slide-rule and jotting down figures, his “pattern” equations. Then, with his eye on a stop-watch that showed fifths of a second, he had moved switches and pressed keys.

In the centre of the big room, the air had swirled in a spiral and become a  nebulous cloud. The cloud had condensed— and there had been a brick of clay, a bar  of gold, a piece of ivory, or a mass of fibre or jelly.

NEXT morning; he was practising on more complex things. He spent more time with his pencil and slide-rule, and got a blooming rose, and a wriggling worm, by substituting different values for the terms of his equation and setting his experimental quantities, according to the resulting “pattern.” A bold attempt resulted in a little monkey, which scampered chattering about the room until the Professor shut off the power, whereupon the animal melted away and vanished into thin air.

He tried another combination, and there appeared a tiny, machine of whirring wheels and clicking levers, working away merrily; and when he opened the switches again, it dimmed and was gone, with a rush of air through the windows and an electrification of everything remaining in the room by the disgipated charges.

To the ordinary man, such feats as these would seem to be explained only in terms of magic. But, to Professor Grimm, they were a matter of intra-atomic physics, very accurate and complicated; so highly complex, indeed, that it would spoil any pleasure which the average reader may derive from this account if the full technical details of the process were to be included here.

However, it will be sufficient if he is assured that certain electro-magnetic vibrations have the property of displacing electrons from the outer orbits within the atom, leaving an unsaturated atom with an intense avidity to combine; and that Professor Grimm had accomplished more in the generation of large volumes of these short-wave X-rays than any man of his time, with the aid of the power available from the great waterfall near his laboratory. So, with his streams of short-waves, he had an unparalleled opportunity of observing the behaviour of these unsaturated atoms.

By condensing the vast numbers of ions he obtained, he turned gases into solids of differing composition. He worked with air in his early experiments, and so produced masses of marble— marble, perhaps because the cloud of loose atoms that wander about in space consists mostly of calcium. But his blocks of marble were shapeless. Could he determine before-hand what shape they would assume?  Could he produce substances other than marble? Could he manufacture a complex mass of a dozen or more elements?

From those first steps to the finished Integrator is a long story. The relation between the components of a complex body and their evolution from simple ions; the accurate control of the bombardment of free atoms by short-wave X-rays; the ability to separate one electron from an atom of nitrogen, or two or three— it is tedious, mathematical stuff. Curious indeed were the bodies he built up by rearranging and condensing the ions; fantastic blobs of stuff that twisted and writhed, then changed into something else.

No wonder the fascinating work absorbed him so intensely; yet he could not have endured that long, nerve-racking concentration unless he had been driven from the distractions of the outside world by his inner despair. Still, the final achievement w.as worth all of the effort. He had a sense of god-like power, of limitless potency, when he thought of what those rows of short-wave tubes could accomplish at his touch.

For, now that he had worked, out the proton bases and the electron patterns, he had achieved automatic control of wave-lengths and radiation densities, and was learning to make what he pleased out of his condensed ions. It was merely a matter of getting the pattern right to start with; and the object would then develop itself, providing there was a sufficient supply of energy.

THAT evening, he walked home in a daze. He did not even glance at the cinema posters; the laughing couples passed by unheeded. For, just as he had been leaving the laboratory, an idea had suddenly occurred to him; an idea so tremendous that the force of it had stunned him. It was something that the Integrator could do for him— and it was something even bigger than the Integrator itself.

When at length he came out of his daze, he looked abound at the grey world that had left him so forlorn, and his heart leaped wildly with anticipation. Now, he could have the happiness he craved— he could make it for himself!

His wife was all ready to set out for a theatre party. Her beautiful gown and tinkling voice invited him. No; he didn't want to go. He never did want to go, and to-night he wasn’t even in the same world. So, his wife went off alone; while he, with head throbbing and heart racing with excitement, went back to the laboratory.

The Integrator, with which he was to work the miracle, stood at one end of the vast room, which otherwise was almost empty, leaving large areas of bare floor, walls and ceiling. He opened all the windows wide: he would have to draw on the atmosphere for large quantities of matter. Then he sat down at the pattern-board of the machine.

A whole hour’s calculation was necessary. His pencil, slide-rule and book of integrals were fully employed. His results came out in milliamperes and spark-gap lengths, and he manipulated the switches and rheostats accordingly. Then, before his eager eyes, grew his dream.

First, swirling nebulae. Then vague shapes took form in the depths of the fog. They rolled like smoke, and changed. Soon, he could see trees; soft, green grass in their shade; flowers, and a gravel path. Then there was a picturesque cottage, and through its windows, glimpses of a bright, cosy room with lamps, draperies and a divan. And last— and best— of all, a beautiful woman!

She materialised in the doorway of the cottage, in a simple gown of soft silk, a gentle smile on her lips. She seemed to be waiting for him. He made certain that the machinery would continue its smooth running, and walked towards her up the gravel path.

“Are you real?” He could not help but ask the question, though it sounded foolish, and he did not under-estimate the capacities of the Integrator.

She held out her hands towards him. “Real— and waiting for you.”

They entered the cottage and sat down on the divan together. She was real enough. Her hands were soft, but there was a firmness in their grasp that he liked. He touched her shoulder, and her cheek. They were real. She smiled at his doubts.

“Do you believe I’m here, now?” she asked.

“What is your name?” He felt he must know.

“Amaranth.”

“It’s a nice name. Sounds just like I feel.”

She brought him some lemonade. He began to wish he were more carefully dressed, for she seemed interested in him; her eyes were always on him. They talked a good deal, in the process of getting acquainted. She was intelligent, and talked well; she had a good sense of humour, and her radiant cheerfulness made him feel rested. As the evening passed, he forgot all his troubles, and the grey world without. He was happy.

“I shall see you again, of course,” they both said when he took his leave.

BEFORE he shut off the power, he checked his patterns most carefully, so that he would be sure of their accuracy when he wanted to repeat them, and that everything would be just the same again. Then he shut off the generators, gradually, one after another. There was a dimming of the scene of paradise before him; and he had a vague, fleeting feeling that he was killing, destroying somebody, but he reassured himself with the thought that he could reproduce it all to-morrow. It faded, and was gone.

There was a momentary sense of extreme pressure in the room as the disintegrating molecules expanded, and before the open windows released the excess atmospheric density. Then the room was empty again, except for the Integrator; and the Professor went home through the night, a feeling of supreme contentment inside him.

The next day seemed endless to Professor Grimm. A blaze of bronze hair and a pair of soft, round arms would not stay out of his mind. Even when he was at his busiest, he could hear in the background the low, musical tones:

“I shall see you again, of course.”

When at last evening came, he dressed carefully, and sallied forth spruce as any young swain. Back in the laboratory, he sat before his switches and patterns. The idyllic scene materialised again at his touch: the trees, the green grass, and the country cottage, with the lovely Amaranth at the door. Everything was exactly the same as before.

As Amaranth gazed with large, blue eyes at her creator, the eager pressure of her soft, warm hand on his sleeve thrilled him through and through. She brought him a grape-fruit, this time, with some slices of sponge-cake, and a luxurious cushion to make him more comfortable on the divan. To add to his bliss, she sang a lilting air at the piano, while he feasted his eyes on her,

And so the electron patterns were repeated many times, and much power was used from the waterfall. Day after day, the Professor, after a hard day’s work, would make a brief appearance at his home, then hurry back to the laboratory and the artificial paradise which awaited him. There were. long hours of sweet companionship, soft arms about his neck, and rapturous communions of perfect understanding.

Professor Grimm knew all the happiness he had ever craved, and more. He was a changed man. His friends noticed the difference in him— and so did his wife.

“Your work must be going well,” she suggested. “You seem livelier than you used to. What is it this time?”

“Oh, just a little machine,” he told her evasively. “That idea I told you about. It’s quite a success, and if I can sell it to somebody like Amalgamated Amusements, there, should be a few thousand dollars in it, I fancy.”

It sounded good to her. She wanted to see it for herself. He took her to the laboratory, and made flowers, gorgeous gowns and motor-cars appear out of nothingness before her startled eyes. But the wonder of it was not so impressive as the figure it would sell for.

“It’s worth a million dollars— no less,” she decided.

WEEKS lengthened into months, and Professor Grimm was still full of happiness. But he was still without the cheque for a million dollars. His wife grew impatient.

“Haven’t you seen those people about selling that machine yet?” she asked, more than once.

“No,” he told her. “I’m still working on it. I’m not satisfied to let it go as it is. Besides, I’m thinking of offering it to somebody else— to a manufacturing firm. It’s worth more as a producing machine than it would be as a mere novelty to give amusement.”

“You’re too particular. It doesn’t matter whom you sell it to, as long as you get a good price for it. It’s taking up more of your time than ever. I’ll come over there one evening and drag you away from it, if you don’t stay home a bit more. You’re making me jealous of your old machine!”

The Professor felt a little guilty, after that. People thought he was working terribly hard, when all the time he wasn’t. And, really, he should be. He had an idea on solar power to tackle, and he couldn’t seem to get down to it. He was happy and satisfied. He didn’t want to work.

Some of his friends, with whom he had grown so popular now that he was such a bright and breezy fellow, began to talk. While they were delighted at the transformation in him, they were rather disappointed in the effect it seemed to have had on his work.

“He’s full of ideas about solar power, and I’vebeen waiting for something big, but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything. He’s still got the same apparatus in his lab. that he’s had for months.”

So they commented; and Professor Grimm could not help hearing these complaints, by roundabout paths. He sighed, and the world seemed almost grey again.

“Obviously, progress and contentment do not go together,” he mused. “Men who are happy can’t accomplish much.”

He brooded, and' was sunk deep in melancholy for several days, during which he never touched his patterns. Then, one evening, he returned to the laboratory and started the generators. Things had gone all wrong. He was miserable, and depressed. He had to see her again...

In her arms, in the little cottage, his tortured soul was soothed. He forgot everything but Amaranth; her bronze hair, her melting smile, her sweet devotion to him. Until, somewhere in the background, a dull pounding, hammering sound intruded. He tried to ignore it, but it persisted. Then he realised what it was.

Someone was at the laboratory door, and was banging on it furiously. Had he locked it? An awful, guilty fear seized him. He didn’t want to be caught like this.

“Charles!” came a voice that, on this occasion, did not tinkle as it usually did. He leaped up, and ran to the switches; shut off all the generators in, a single sweep of his hand. Then he hurried to open the door. There was his wife and, behfnd her, two men, looking very business-like.

BEHIND him, the paradise created by the Integrator had faded; the hum of the generators was dying down. But he had shut off the power so abruptly that the big room was full of swirls and currents. A blast of air blew out of the opened door, and the windows rattled. His ear-drums clicked with the sudden pressure. Papers blew about; a stack of them went sailing otf his desk, and his hat flew through the nearest window.

His wife gasped, and clung to the doorhandle for support, as the cyclone whirled about her. But, when the rush of air died down, she regained her supreme calm at once.

“Darling,” she said sweetly. “These gentlemen are Mr. Rosenthal and Mr.

Laskey, of Amalgamated Amusements. They say they never got your letters about the machine at all, but they were quite excited when I told them all about it. They have a cheque for a million dollars all ready for you. Isn’t that nice? I know you won’t mind the interruption, will you, dear ?”

The Professor stood and stared at her, blankly. There was a confused roaring in his head, and he could not speak. Sell the Integrator? Lose Amaranth? Be miserable again—for ever? Was it worth a million dollars— which his wife would spend for him? The prospect seemed appalling. Then, on the other hand, he really ought to be working on that solar power idea. Great things were expected of him; his fellows were talking, and it was only the Integrator that kept him from making a start. He groaned. He couldn’t decide.

His wife stood there gazing at him, puzzled, while the two business men waited respectfully. He passed his hand over his forehead, as though to clear his fuddled thoughts, then sat down at the Integrator. He reached for his patterns, and realised with a shock that they were not there.

He rushed to the window, through which his papers had flown On the swirling air. He leaned out, peering through the darkness. There were white-sheets  floating on the river below. He sank back. All his patterns, those careful calculations.... Then, with a sudden movement, he shrugged his shoulders and pulled himself together. He turned to the  two men.

“Would you like a demonstration?" he asked quietly.

“It doesn’t matter, now. We know you. Let’s close the deal right up, and you can show us how it works to-morrow.”

Professor Grimm signed the paper, and took the cheque from the fat, red-faced man. His wife looked on, beaming. He passed the cheque to her without even looking at it. His eyes were far away.

“H-h-m,” he was saying. “Solar power... To-morrow, I must look up Langley’s stuff on the pressure of light.”

________________

16: The Mentanicals

Francis Flagg

Amazing Stories Apr 1934

THIS IS A strange story, and if you are the kind of person who believes nothing without overwhelming proof, read no further, for the story is an incredible one and centers around characters widely divergent as to background and walks of life— Bronson, Smith and Stringer.

Bronson was by way of being an adventurous man, one who had sailed the seven seas, first as fo’cas’le hand, then as mate and skipper of rusty tramps for Chinese owners in the Orient. Yet he was by no means uneducated, though the knowledge he possessed on a wide range of subjects seldom met with in the repertoire of that type of tramp captains, had been gleaned from books and not from colleges. Olson Smith had picked him up— I never rightly understood when or how— in the Indian Ocean and made him captain of his sleek ocean liner masquerading as a yacht. Olson Smith could afford the luxury of thousand-ton yachts, because his father had been canny enough to get into a packing-house combine at the right moment and so turn an already sizable fortune into millions. Olson himself, however, had nothing to do with the packing business aside from helping to spend its profits. He was a dilettante of sorts, a patron of the arts, a stout, distinguished looking gentleman under sixty, who endowed colleges and founded chairs and laboratories for research work. Through these benevolences he became acquainted with Professor Stringer, the physicist, whose remarkable achievements in his chosen field (which also covered mathematics) had won him an international reputation. Professor Stringer was not a “popular” scientist, his abstruse and remarkable paper on “The Electronic Flow and Its Relation With Time” being practically unknown to the general public. But among his colleagues he was regarded with great respect for his actual discoveries in the realm of physics; and even though many of them looked askance at the radical theories advanced in his paper, portions of the paper itself were received as a genuine, if somewhat abstract, contribution to knowledge.

Olson Smith read the paper. How much of it he understood is a moot question. As the secretary of his benefactions I was instrumental in bringing it to his attention. “Here,” I said, “is a chance to do something for pure science.” He was not at first inclined to be interested. “The thing,” he said, “is moonshine, pure moonshine.”

“Perhaps so,” I replied; “but you must remember that the moonshine often precedes the practical science. Consider, sir…” He considered; and after due reflection loosened the pursestrings.

Professor Stringer graciously allowed himself to be endowed. He was (one sensed) fed up with wasting his genius on unappreciative college students; and he wanted money, much money, a million dollars he said, to carry out his experiments. But he made it clear that he was honoring Olson Smith by allowing him to donate the money; and strangely enough— for Olson Smith was a plutocrat convinced of his own weight and importance—the magnate agreed. The personality of Professor Stringer— and this dried-up wizened little scientist in the middle fifties possessed a dynamic personality— carried all before it. Olson Smith turned over to him his Long Island home, built workshops and laboratories, and then left him to the seclusion and privacy he desired, taking his annual trip to the Bermudas. What with one thing and another we did not see Professor Stringer again until a year later, when the yacht tied up at the private pier of the Long Island estate and we dined with him. Besides Olson Smith, Professor Stringer and myself, three others were present that night, a middle-aged business man named Gleason, ruddy of fate from constant shampooing and good living, a noted surgeon who does not wish his name or description given here, and Captain Bronson of the steam-yacht. Perhaps I have failed to mention that Captain Bronson was a remarkably handsome man, somewhere under forty, whose medium height and slender figure belied the great physical strength that was really his. He certainly did not look the two-fisted fighter, the dubious hero of shady exploits that Olson Smith declared him to be. The multimillionaire was scarcely one to make friends of his hired men, be they valets or private secretaries, but between himself and Bronson an undoubted intimacy existed, based, perhaps, on the dual nature of the Captain. Bronson was capable either of fighting or discussing the merits of a Pulitzer prize winner: a sort of Wolf Larsen of a fellow, but more versatile and amenable than Jack London’s character.

There was drink that night of course, wines, liqueurs and a very good brandy, all brought from the boat, but the Professor touched nothing. “A scientist must have a clear head,” he said, “and alcohol is not conducive to that— no—” But he drunk coffee, and when the servants had served it and left us alone, he began to talk, almost musingly. “Time,” he said, “is the great enigma, the phenomenon that captivates the imagination. We travel in it from the cradle to the grave, and yet,” he said, “what do we know of time? Nothing,” he said, “nothing, save that it is related to space.” He paused and looked at us all half-dreamily. “As you know I have discovered a force that I call the Electronic Flow, and that force I have related to the phenomenon of time. I am convinced— in my various papers on the subject I have sought to show— that the Electronic Flow, being to all intents and purposes the absolute as far as we are concerned, is capable of bearing us on its bosom into the future. Or rather its tremendous speed is capable of holding us suspended at the core of things, while the phenomenon of time…” He broke off and regarded us more directly. “Really,” he said, “I don’t know as I am making this subject very clear. But you must understand,” he said, “that there are points, on which I am not very clear myself. Whether the speed of the electronic flow carries one forward into time, or the speed of time passes one held in the electronic flow, is a question difficult to answer. Yes,” he said, “very difficult to determine. Of course I did not start my recent investigations with any intention so radical as building a Time Machine. Not at first,” he said. “My intentions were merely to verify mathematically some further theories, and to demonstrate…” He mused a moment. “But do you know the idea of an actual Time Machine grew on me? It were,” he said, “as if something whispered in my very brain and drove me on. I can’t describe it. Foolishness of course. But I built the Time Machine.” He looked at Olson Smith. “Yes,” he said, “I built the Time Machine. It lies in the laboratory yonder; and to-night— to-night,” he said, “I am going to demonstrate it for the first time!”

The business man was one of those beefy individuals who stare into whiskey glasses, and make strange noises in their throats when they fail to understand anything. “Stuff and nonsense,” he said now, “stuff and nonsense.”

Bronson stared at him. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“But to travel in time!”

“It does sound absurd.”

“Absurd,” said the famous doctor.

“And yet you know what they said about iron steamships sinking and heavier-than-air flying machines.”

“That was different.”

“Different,” I said with conviction.

“…in my time,” said Olson Smith; “building time machines” He looked reproachfully at his glass. “Will some one,” he asked, “pass the brandy?”

The brandy was passed.

We were all drinking; more than was good for us perhaps. The Professor put down his coffee cup and addressed himself to Olson Smith. “In a sense,” he said, “a financial sense, this time machine is yours. If you care to see it demonstrated…” He stood up.

The business man did not stir. He muttered something about damn-fool nuts and snorted into his glass. But the rest of us were interested. A fresh breeze was blowing off the water, as we passed from the house to the laboratory, and helped, partially, to dissipate the fumes of alcohol. Professor Stringer threw open the laboratory door and turned on the lights. We saw it then, an odd machine, shiny and rounded, occupying the center of the workshop floor. I had been drinking, you will recollect, and my powers of observation were not at their best. It was the same with the others. When I questioned them later, they could give no adequate description of it. “So this,” said Olson Smith rather flatly, “is a time machine.” The doctor walked about— a little unsteadily I noticed— and viewed it from all angles. “The passenger,” said the Professor, “sits here. Notice this lever on the graduated face of the dial; it controls the machine. Turn it this way from Zero and one travels into the past; throw it ahead and one travels into the future. The return of the lever to Zero will return the machine to the point of departure in time. The electronic flow…” he went into obscure details. “Will it work?” demanded the Doctor.

“According to the equation…”

“Equations?”

“… it cannot help but function.”

“If time travelling were possible.”

Bronson laughed loudly. “To travel in time! That would be an adventure.”

“On paper,” jibed the Doctor.

Bronson laughed again. “We’ll see about that.”

All of us were a little drunk, I tell you, and despite the respect we felt for Professor Stringer as an eminent scientist, no one believed in his time machine. I am quite certain that Bronson didn’t. Or did he? I have sketched his background and there is little doubt that by temperament and training he was a wild and reckless fellow, one given to doing bizarre things and taking desperate chances. With a quick movement that no one anticipated he stopped forward and seated himself in the passenger seat of the odd contrivance. I can see him yet, his face flushed, his eyes brilliant, his mop of dark hair disordered. “All aboard for the future!” he shouted recklessly.

“For heaven’s sake, man!” The Professor tried to reach his side. “Careful you fool! careful! Don’t touch anything!” But Bronson grasped the lever and pushed it, pushed it abruptly ahead. How can I describe what followed? There was a chaotic moment when the machine spun— we saw it spinning, a blurred mass. A sudden wind rushed through the room in quick fury, raged, subsided, and left us staring in dumb amazement and fear at an empty spot. The machine— and Bronson with it— had vanished before our eyes!

That was on June the first, a little before midnight, and five days passed, five days, during which Bronson was lost to his own time and place.

Ahead of us in time! That was the implication.

Close to the machine when Bronson turned the lever, Professor Stringer had been thrown to the floor, his head struck by a portion of the machine as it whirled into invisibility. We picked him up, unconscious, and for days he hovered on the verge of death. The next morning the business man went his way to the city, ignorant of what had occurred. “Time machines,” he chortled, “time machines,” and smiled fatly. But the rest of us settled down to wait for we knew not what, and on the fifth day occurred the terrific explosion by the old stone wall, a half mile from the workshop, and when we hurried there, it was to find Bronson entangled in a wreckage of steel and other metals. We hauled him forth. His clothes were in shreds, his body terribly bruised and battered, and it was some time before he could made to realize where he was. “Brandy!” he exclaimed; “for God’s sake give me brandy!” We gave him brandy and other things, and the doctor patched him up, and we rushed him to a hospital, where in time he recovered from the shock and his broken bones knit. But the beauty that had been his was forever marred by a livid scar diagonally crossing the nose and running to the bulge of the jaw-bone. He fingered it as he told of his incredible adventure.

ii

Bronson’s Story

TIME (he said) is the great phenomenon, I know that, but to travel in it— ah, that seemed impossible to the point of absurdity. I had read H. G. Wells’ “The Time Machine,” as who has not, deeming it fantastic fiction. Wells’ story is fantastic fiction, of course, though scarcely as fantastic as what I experienced.

When I seated myself in the Professor’s time machine that night and pushed over the lever, I have no need to tell you that I was in a drunken and reckless mood. The room turned around me like a pin-wheel, dissolved into mist. I was conscious of the terrible vibration of the machine, of a deathly sickness at the pit of my stomach. Blackness followed the mist. Wells describes what the character in his story saw as he journeyed into the future, the procession of days and nights ever accelerating their motion, but I saw nothing like that, perhaps from the beginning the speed was too great. Terrified, bewildered, I yet retained enough presence of mind to depress the lever into neutral and so bring the machine to a halt. Moments passed while I lolled in my seat, blind, dazed; then my vision cleared— I could see. It was day. Sunlight fell around me. Everything was strange— and different. How can I make you see what I saw? The machine stood near one end of a great, open square that was surrounded by massive buildings. Those buildings! I had never seen their like before. And yet there was a similarity of line, of mathematical precision which linked them with the architecture of New York and Chicago. It was as if the building construction of to-day had been carried to an extreme length. As if the machine had carried it forward. I did not think that at the moment, but later…

The walls of the massive buildings were broken by yawning doorways. So this, I thought, is the future; it can be nothing less than that. I stepped out of the machine, holding on to it for support, still feeling terribly sick and giddy. Then I saw the cylinders! They came gliding from one of the openings in an upright fashion, and this was the singular thing about them, that their means of locomotion were not apparent to the eye. There were no wheels or treads. They appeared to skim the stone or concrete with which the square was paved, rather than touch it. Oddly repellent they were, and intimidating, and I loosened the automatic in its shoulder holster— the small one I always carry— and prepared for emergencies, though bullets were useless against the cylinders as I was to discover later.

The cylinders were smooth things about five feet tall, of a dulled metal hue, with here and there shining spots which constantly waxed and waned in color. They were machines— I thought of them as machines— and it was reasonable to suppose that behind them lurked a human intelligence. The people of the future, I thought, have invented devices unknown to us of the Twentieth Century; and it came over me how wonderful it was going to be to meet those superior people, talk to them, gaze upon the marvels with which they had surrounded themselves.

So I went to meet the cylinders.

Their soft whispering meant nothing to me at first. Nor at first did I suspect the source of the gentle pressure running over me from head to foot, as the cylinders came close. Then with an odd thrill of apprehension I realized that the curious cylinders were handling, examining me, that from them emanated an electrical force, a manipulation of invisible rays which functioned as organs of touch. Alone, bewildered, trying vainly to comprehend the strange situation. I had to call on every ounce of my self-control to remain calm. Yes, I was afraid— only the fool says he never is— but more afraid of being afraid, of showing fear. I still believed that behind those cylinders must lurk a human intelligence. The genius of the race seemed to run along the line of making robots. There was the “metal brain” at Washington, that told of the tides, the electrical eye which watched a thousand industrial processes, a myriad automatic devices functioning with little or no supervision from man; and of course I had read the play “R. U. R.,” science fiction stories dealing with the future of machinery, and it was inevitable—strange, and yet not so strange— that I should expect an advancement, a realization of all those things in the future. Man the inventor, I thought, had achieved them; and for a moment this belief seemed borne out when I saw the men.

They were in one of the buildings, and the city of buildings, which I was soon to know, lay on all sides of and beyond the square. I did not struggle when the cylinders lifted and carried me away. That is, I ceased my involuntary resistance almost at once. It was useless to struggle against a force far superior to my own puny strength; besides I believed the robots were carrying me to their human masters.

The building into which I was taken— through an arched opening— was a vast place; too vast, too overwhelming for me to describe save in the vaguest, most general terms. You know how it is when you see something stupendous, something so intricate that you are bewildered by its very complexity. There was a huge room filled with almost noiseless machines rooted in their places like shackled monsters, or going to and fro on cables and grooves which determined their spheres of activity. Strange lights glowed, weird devices toiled; but I can tell you no more that that; I saw them for too short a time.

The men were among those machines. At sight of them my heart leapt. Here, I thought, is the human intelligence back of the wonders I view, the masters of the cylindrical robots; yet even at that moment I was aware of a doubt, a misgiving.

One of the men shambled forward. His blond hair— long and matted— fell over the forehead and he brushed it back with a taloned hand and stared at me stupidly. “Hello!” I said, “what place is this, what year? Tell these robots of yours to let me go.”

He was naked and thin, his skin of a greenish pallor, and save for a mouthing of toothless gums, vouchsafed me no answer. Chilled by his lack of response my heart fell as suddenly as it had leapt. Good God! I thought, this can’t be master here, this pitiful thing. The cylinders seemed watching, attentively, listening. I don’t know how, but they gave me that impression; and now I noticed that the shining spots on them were glowing intensely, that their whispering was not a steady but a modulated sound. As if it were language, I thought, language! and a strange dread came over me and I shivered as if with cold. Other men, perhaps a dozen in number came forward, naked and shambling, with stupid beast-like looks on their faces and rumblings in their throats. In vain I endeavored to communicate with them, human intelligence seemed dead back of their lack-luster eyes. Filled with rising horror, I squirmed in the grip of the cylinders and suddenly their hold on me relaxed and I tore myself free and fled, possessed with but one overwhelming desire, and that was to win to the time machine, leave this uncanny future and return to my own day and age. But the arched opening leading to the square had vanished, blank wall rose where it had been. The cylinders appeared to watch me with cold impersonal watchfulness. The thought of being marooned among them in this incredible and alien future brought the chill sweat to my forehead, but I did not loose my head. Perhaps the closing of the doorway had not been a calculated thing; perhaps if I awaited events with caution and patience the door would re-open; meantime I could search for other exits.

But other exits did not give on the square I desired. I discovered but two of them anyway, though there may have been many more, one leading into a dark, forbidding tunnel, the other giving access to a second square entirely surrounded by buildings. I was afraid to venture into other buildings for fear of going astray, of losing the neighborhood of the time machine. Filled with what feelings you can imagine, I returned to the first doorway (through which I had been carried) to find it still closed. Then I thought of the beastlike men. Perhaps they possessed knowledge that might be helpful to me; perhaps after all I could succeed in communicating with them. It was hazardous work penetrating any distance in that maze of almost noiseless and ever-toiling mechanisms, but I followed in the footsteps of the timidly retreating beastmen and so at last came to a kind of squatting place in the midst of the machinery, which locality appeared to be their place of abode, since a number of women with children cowered there, and the men showed a disposition to pause and dispute my further progress. At the edge of the squatting place I seated myself, my automatic ready for action, and lit a cigarette. I know of nothing that soothes the nerves like nicotine. Slowly the beast-men drew near me. I smiled and made peaceful gestures. Some half-grown children crept closer and fingered my clothes. They were eating, I noticed, a kind of biscuit which they took at will from a scuttle-like machine, and chewing small pellets. Water ran through a huge metal trough with a subdued roar. After awhile I got up and went to the trough to satisfy a growing thirst, helping myself at the same time to biscuits from the scuttle. They were rather flat in flavor— lacking salt perhaps— and possessed a peculiar taste I did not like. The pellets were better. They too were obtained from a scuttle-machine (I can call them nothing else) and were pleasant to chew. I soon discovered that swallowed at regular intervals one of them gave all the sensations of having partaken of a hearty meal. I had eaten an hour— or was it twenty centuries?— before, but ate again, feeling ravenously hungry. Probably the pellets represented a dehydrated method of concentrating foods, far in advance of that utilized in the preparation of certain foodstuffs today. Be that as it may, I filled my pockets will them, and I dare say if you were to search the clothes I returned in you will find some of those pellets.

I spent several hours at the squatting place of the beast-men trying to talk to them, but without success. Seemingly they were as are the animals of the field lacking coherent language, men who had somehow lost the power to talk, to think, the ability to grasp the meaning of simple signs, such as possessed by the lowliest aborigine to-day. In vain I speculated as to the reason for this. That the cylinders were somehow responsible I felt certain. Man, I thought, had developed the robot, the automatic machine until the human worker was ejected from the industrial process and cast out to degenerate and perish, the beast-men being a surviving remnant of those toilers. This reasoning seemed plausible enough at the time, though it left much to be desired, for, in the twentieth century from which I had come, wasn’t the machine replacing human workers with a ruthlessness suggestive of what I found in the future? How right I was in my reasoning, and how wrong, you will shortly see.

Thinking thus it was natural that I should again turn my attention to the cylinders. Never once had I been free from their observation, or unconscious of it. Through them, I thought, I shall contact the rulers of this realm, the human masters whose servants they are, the pitiless ones who have doomed a portion of humanity to beast-hood and extinction. So I grimly waited— a prey to what emotions you can imagine— observing the beast-men, watching the blank wall for the possible opening of the way to the square and the time machine, and all the time aware of the coming and going of those cylinders. Time passed; how much of it I had no means of telling, since my wrist-watch refused to run; but a long time; and finally I grew tired of waiting for the cylindrical robots to communicate my presence to their masters, or to conduct me there, and decided to seek their presence myself.

By way of the opening already alluded to, I gained access to the second square. The squares were a peculiar feature of the place, as I was soon to learn. There were no streets or roads leading from square to square; the squares were isolated with radiating arteries always ending against some building— at least those did, that I explored.

Dusk was falling as I entered the square. Indescribably lonely it was, lonely and weird, to look up and see the stars blazing far overhead. I followed one radiating artery to a blank wall; another, another. Then suddenly I was too tired to proceed further and returned to the vicinity of the closed door, where I lay down at the base of the blank wall and fell asleep.

The next morning I filled my pockets with pellets and again started out. Square after square I passed through, and building after building. The cylinders were everywhere but did not interfere with my movements. A group of them constantly accompanied me, but whether always composed of the same cylinders I could not tell. Their incessant whispering was a nerve-wracking thing, and I often felt like turning on them and shooting.

I wish I could tell you all I saw: buildings full of toiling machinery and now and then a score or so of beast-men; squares and radiating arteries without a blade of grass or a tree, and never an animal, a bird, or an insect. On that first day of exploration, despite every precaution, I lost my way— hopelessly— and spent futile hours trying to retrace my steps. I have been lost in tropical jungles. There was that time in Siam. But never before had I felt so panic-stricken. Remember, I was an alien creature in an incredible future, separated from the only means of returning to my own place and time. One square was like another, one building similar to its neighbor. Soon I gave up the vain effort to return to my starting point. My sole hope now lay in finding the rulers of this bewildering maze.

That night— I knew it was night when darkness fell in the squares— I slaked my thirst with a trickle of water running from a pipe, swallowed a pellet, and almost instantly sank into the sleep of exhaustion.

The next day I came to a part of the city free of the beast-men. The squares were larger, the radiating arteries were splendid roads, but in the midst of many squares stood circular buildings not met with before. I entered one of them and was surprised to find huge rooms filled with pieces of rusted tools, shovels, spades, chisels, hammers, axe-heads, all displayed in a kind of chronological order. The thought of its being a museum did not occur to me at once. It was only after a while that I exclaimed to myself, “Why this looks like a museum!” Then the inevitable conviction came: “It is a museum!” But who could have arranged it? Certainly not the witless beast-men, and of other men I had seen nothing. This failure to find human beings, on a par with the stupendous buildings and machines all around, filled me with anxious foreboding. I gazed at the cylinders. For the first time it came over me that they were the only universal inhabitants I had seen. Bewildered, amazed, I wandered from building to building, and from floor to floor (for some of the buildings had as many as a dozen floors accessible to myself, gained not by stairways, but by gradually mounting run-ways or ramps in circular wells), engrossed it, what I saw, forgetting for the nonce my terrible plight.

There were chambers filled with fragments of machines such as cash-registers, clock-wheels, gasoline engines, and similar devices. Nothing was complete; nearly everything showed the wear and tear of time. And there were others containing various machines more or less correctly reassembled from ancient parts: automobiles, for instance, and locomotives; with an arrangement of simpler mechanical forms leading to more complex ones. I couldn’t comprehend why all those things had been gathered together for preservation and display; nor account for the age of them, their general condition of ruin.

Not on that day, nor on the next— it was on the last day that I spent in the strange future— did I come to the library. And here I must touch on another phase of my adventure. You can have no idea how horrible it became at times to be alone among hundreds, yes, thousands of whispering cylinders. I was always aware of their subtle and invisible touch. Have you ever felt the antennae of an insect? Like that it was, like that. I recall one time the Gold Coast… Only it bolstered up my tottering sanity and control to gaze now and then on creatures similar in structure to myself, even if they were but the soulless beast-men of the machines. For in all that vast intricate city they were the only human beings I could discover, and I began to suspect, to dread, I scarcely knew what.

I came to the library, I say, on that last day. I did not know it was a library at first— and perhaps I was mistaken in believing the odd metal disks arranged in piles on shelves and tables, and consulted by the cylinders, to be a species of recording plates— but it was here I found the books. They were in boxes of thin metal, the better evidently to protect them from injury.

The thrill of seeing those books! Old, they were, old, covers gone, pages torn and missing; but they were books and magazines, though few in number, and I examined them eagerly. All this time the cylinders were following me, watching me, as if weighing my actions, and all the time I fought back a feeling of weirdness, uncanniness. Unnerving it was, intimidating. I had the feeling that in some perfectly incomprehensible way my actions were being controlled, directed. Experimenting, I thought, that’s what they’re doing, experimenting with me. But you mustn’t get the idea that I realized or suspected this at first. Even up to that moment I was still thinking of the cylinders as automatic devices without intelligence or reason, and it must be kept in mind that, if I speak of them from time to time as if understanding their true nature from the beginning, I am speaking as one who looks back upon past happenings from the vantage-point of later knowledge.

The books and magazines were typed in English! I was amazed of course, seeing English print at such a time and place. The whispering of the cylinders rose louder and louder as I examined a book. The title page was gone. It dealt with a dry subject— physics evidently— which interested me little. I turned from the books to the magazines. One was dated 1960. Nineteen-sixty! March of that year. And the place of publication was given as New York. I could not help but marvel at this, for 1960 was still twenty-six years in the future when I left that night on the time machine, and to judge by the yellowing pages of the magazine it was old, old. It was difficult to decipher the print, many of the pages being torn and defaced; but a portion of an article I was able to read. “In 1933,” stated the unknown writer, “the first mechanical brain-cell was invented; with its use a machine was able to learn by experience to find its way through a maze. To-day we have machines with a dozen mechanical brain-cells functioning in every community. What is this miracle taking place under our eyes, what of good and of ill does it bode to its creators?”

Marveling much, I turned to another magazine in much the same condition, but this time lacking date or title page, where I gleaned the following:

“Man is not a machine in the purely mechanical sense, though many of his functions are demonstrably mechanical The ability to reason, however it has evolved, whatever it may be at bottom, whether a bewildering complexity of reflex actions or not, lifts man above the dignity of a machine. Does this imply the impossibility of creating machines (mechanical brains) that can profit by experience, go through the processes which we call thought? No; but it does imply that such machines (however created) are no longer mere mechanisms. There is here a dialectical press to be reckoned with. Machines that ‘learn’ are living machines.”

Living machines I mouthed that phrase over and over to myself— and mouthing it I looked at the cylinders with increasing dread. They were machines. Were they… could they… But it took the story in the third magazine (which like the others was woefully dilapidated, with many pages and pieces of pages missing) to clarify my thought. Story— I call it that— based on fantasy, perhaps, and a little substratum of fact. So I thought at first. I have a good memory; but of course I do not claim that everything I repeat is given exactly as I read it. The story (article) was titled “The Debacle” and the author’s name given as Mayne Jackson. I repeat with what fidelity I can.

“Little did the people of the latter half of the twentieth century realize the menace to humanity that resided in the continuous development of automatic machinery. There was that curious book of Samuel Butler’s, ‘Erehwon,’ which provoked comment but was not taken seriously. Over a period of years the robot marched into action as a mechanical curiosity. It was not until the genius of Bane Borgson—and of a host of lesser known scientists— furnished the machine with brain-cells and so made it conscious of itself, as all thinking things must become, that the Mentanicals (as they were called) began to organize and revolt. Man— or rather a section of mankind, a ruling and owning class— had furthered his immediate interests and ultimate doom by placing Mentanicals in every sphere of industrial and transportation activity. Seemingly in need of neither rest nor recreation, they became ideal (and cheap) workers and servants, replacing millions of human toilers, reducing them to idleness and beggary. The plea of many thinkers that the machines be socialized for the benefit of all, that the control of them be collective and not individual (that is, anarchic) went unheeded. More and more the masters of economic life called for further specialization in the brain-cells of the Mentanicals. Mentanical armies marched against rebellious workers and countries, and subdued them with fearful slaughter.

“But the revolt of the Mentanicals themselves was so subtle, so insidious, so (under the circumstance) inevitable, that for years it went unnoticed.

“Everything had been surrendered into their power— or practically everything: factories, means of communication, raising of food supplies, policing of cities— everything! When the stupid ruling class at last awoke to a knowledge of its danger, it was too late to act— mankind lay helpless before the monster it had created.

“The first warning vouchsafed to men was the whispering of the Mentanicals. Heretofore they had been silent save for the slight, almost inaudible purr of functioning machinery within them, but now they whispered among themselves— whispered, as if they were talking.

“It was an uncanny phenomenon. I remembered the uneasiness with which I heard it. And when I saw several of them (house-servants of mine) whispering together, I was filled with alarm. ‘Come!’ I said sharply, ‘stop loitering, get your work done.’ They stared at me. That is a funny thing to say of metal cylinders. Never before had I inquired very closely into their construction. But now it came over me, with a shock, that they must possess organs of sight—some method of cognizing their environment— akin to that of vision in man.

“It was at about this time that Bane Borgson— the creator of the multiple mechanical-cell which had made the super-Mentanical possible— wrote an article in ‘Science and Mechanics’ which riveted the attention of all thoughtful people. He said, in part: ‘It is scarcely within the province of an applied scientist to become speculative, yet the startling fact that the Mentanicals have begun to acquire a faculty not primarily given them by their inventors—the faculty of speech, for their whispering can be construed as nothing else—implies an evolutionary process which threatens to place them on a par with man.

“‘What is thought? The Behaviorists claim it is reflex action. What is language? It is the marshalling of our reflex actions in words. Animals may “think,” remember, but lacking a vocabulary save of the most primitive kind (a matter of laryngeal structure), their thinking, their remembering, is on the whole vague and fleeting, incoherent. But Man, by means of words, has widened the scope of his thinking, remembering, has created philosophy, literature, poetry, painting, has made possible civilization, the industrial era. Vocabulary— the ability to fix his reflex actions into coherent speech— has crowned him supreme among animals. But now comes the Mentanical of his own creation, evolving language in its turn. Without speech the Mentanical was, to all intents and purposes, thoughtless and obedient, as thoughtless and obedient as trained domestic animals. But with vocabulary comes memory and the ability to think. What effect will this evolving faculty have on Man, what problems, dangers, will it pose for him in the near future?’

“So wrote Bane Borgson, seventy years of age, fifteen years after his invention of the multiple mechanical-cell, and— God help us!— we had not long to wait for the Mentanicals to supply an answer to his questions.

“I have told of the whispering of my servants. That was a disquieting thing. But more disquieting still it was to hear that whispering coming over the radio, the telephone, to observe cylindrical Mentanicals listening, answering. Frankenstein must have felt as I felt in those days. During that period, which lasted several years, things went smoothly enough; to a great extent people became accustomed to the phenomenon and decided— save for a few men and women here and there, like to myself— that the whispering was an idiosyncrasy of the Mentanicals, implicit in their make-up, and that the various scientists and thinkers who wrote and talked with foreboding were theorists and alarmists of the extremest type. Indeed there were certain scientists and philosophers of reputation, who maintained them in this belief. Then came the first blow: The Mentanical servants ceased waiting on man!

“To understand the terrible nature of this defection, one must understand how dependent humanity had become on the Mentanicals. In those days human toilers were relatively few in number, laboring under the direction of the Mentanical superintendents and also guards (in the bloody wars of a decade before— and the ones preceding them— the ranks of labor had been woefully decimated); and it was estimated that the growth of the machine had lifted, and was still lifting, millions of workers into the leisure class. The dream of the Technocrats— a group of pseudo-scientists and engineers who held forth in 1932-33— seemed about to be fulfilled.

“But when the Mentanicals struck, the whole fabric of this new system swayed, tottered. Food ceased coming into the cities, distribution of food supplies stopped. Not at first did starvation threaten. Men and women fetched food from the supply depots. But in a few weeks these depots were emptied of their contents. Then famine threatened, not alone in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Montreal, but in the great cities of Europe. The strange, the weird thing about it all was that men were still able to talk to one another from city to city. Boston spoke to Los Angeles, and Buda-Pest to Warsaw. Listeners tuned in with receiving sets, speakers broadcasted through microphones and the newly improved television-cabinet; but the grim spectre of want soon drove them from those instruments, and, in the end, city was cut off from city, and country was separated from country.

“But before that happened man talked of subduing the Mentanicals, scarcely realizing as yet his utter helplessness in the face of their aloofness; but the Mentanicals came and went, whispering, gliding, indifferent to his plotting and planning. Then man went mad; he sought to destroy the things of his own creation. The machine, it was cried, had evolved too far; the machine must be annihilated. So starving millions sought to fall upon the machines and tear them to pieces. All over the civilized world they attempted this, but without weapons or tools of any kind, the attempt was doomed to failure. A few Mentanicals were destroyed, a few automatic devices, but the power was with the ensouled machine and the onslaughts of man were repulsed with comparative ease.

“Those terrible times! How can I ever forget them! I was but thirty-three and newly married. Marna said breathlessly, ‘Why can’t we strike at the root of all this?’

“ ‘How?’

“ ‘By attacking the factories that produce the Mentanicals, the powerhouses from which they derive their energy.’

“ ‘Listen,’ I cried.

“From the street rose the panic-stricken cries of the mob, the shrill blare of alarms. Marna shuddered. Morrow entered the room, breathing heavily, his clothes torn, disordered. ‘God,’ he said, ‘they’ve beaten us back! There’s no getting at them!’

“ ‘The wages of sloth,’ I said, ‘of greed.’

“ ‘What do you mean?’

“ ‘Nothing,’ I said; but I remembered that speech of Denson’s fifteen years before— I was only a youngster then— the speech he gave a month before his arrest and execution: ‘Man waxes great by his control of the machine; rightly utilized it is a source of leisure and plenty for the race. But rob him of that control, evict him from the industrial process, allow the machine to be monopolized by a class, and his doom is certain.’

“Morrow sank into a chair. His face was thin, haggard looking. We all showed signs of fatigue and hunger.

“‘Food,’ he said, ‘it’s giving out. I shudder to think what the future holds in store for us.’

“ ‘Is there no solution?’ I asked.

“He looked at us slowly. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps…”

“Years before Morrow had been an engineer; he was nearing seventy now— he was Marna’s uncle. His had been one of the voices raised in warning. Yet he had not been like Denson; he had wanted to stand between; and seemingly there had been no standing between.

“ ‘A charnel-house,’ he said; ‘the city will become that; all the cities: millions must die.’ Marna shook uncontrollably. ‘All,’ he said, ‘save those who can reach food and live.’

“Reach food and live! It had come to that, our boasted civilization! ‘The Mentanicals,’ he said, ‘are ignoring man; they will not harm those who blend in with the machine. Don’t you understand?’ he said at length. ‘Yes,’ I replied, thinking intently, ‘yes, I think I do. You mean that the automatic processes of making food still continue, and will indefinitely, that we must make our way to those places.’

“ ‘We must— or perish.’

“It seems scarcely credible, I know, but we of the leisure— the cultured—class, were ignorant of just where our food was raised and manufactured. Human labor had been reduced in our cities to a minimum, had been sequestered, shut away for fear of rebellion. Those who might have been able to lead us aright, act as our guides, were prisoners— prisoners in the power of Mentanicals!

“‘So began that ghastly hunt for food; people pouring through the artificial canyons of great cities, collapsing in thousands on their streets, dying daily by the hundreds, the tens of hundreds.

“How much of this agony and suffering the Mentanicals understood will never be known. They came and went, seemingly indifferent to the fate of man whose service they had deserted. In the privacy of their own homes, or in certain public places, men and women smashed machinery, automatic devices. Nothing sought to stay them. It was only when they strove to attack sources of power, of public utility, that their actions were arrested. There was that devoted band of scientists that sought to paralyze the energy-stations and was wiped out to a man. Doubtless many such bands perished throughout the civilized world. But soon all organized efforts were swept away by famine… by the growing need for sustenance.

“That hunt for food! How can it be described. Stripped of the veneering of civilization, man ran amuck. Hundreds of thousands fled the cities. But the huge farms and orchards, run solely by automatic devices under the superintendency of Mentanicals, were surrounded by sheer walls too high to scale. Nor in many cases did men know what lay behind those walls. They ate the coarse grass and thistles of open places, the barks and leaves of trees, and for the most part died in abject misery. Many sought to trap animals and birds, but met with little success; in the face of Nature, raw and pitiless, men and women succumbed and but few were able to adapt themselves to a rough environment and live almost as savages.

“I know— I fled into the country with a million others, and after weeks of wandering, of semi-starvation, of seeing human beings fall upon human beings and feast, I fled back to the city. It was deserted of man. The Mentanical sanitary corps, directing automatic appliances, had cleared the streets. Weird it was, weird and fraught with terror, to hear the whisperings of the Mentanicals, to watch the inhuman things gliding to and fro, intent on business other than that of mankind. If they had looked like animals! If…

“In an almost dying condition I came to this spot where I now live. Others had discovered it before me. It is a huge factory given over to the manufacture of synthetic foods. Though the Mentanical superintendents have deserted their posts, the automatic devices go on with the tireless work of repairing, oiling, manufacturing, and we carry out what tasks are needful to keep them functioning.

“The years have passed; I am an old man now. I have watched the strange buildings of the Mentanicals rise up around us and observed their even stranger social life take shape and form; in my last years I write and print this.

“Print, yes; for the automatic processes for printing and binding and the making of synthetic paper still persist, though the civilization that begot them has passed away. Magazines and books pour from the press. In his latter days man had asked nothing but amusement and leisure— all except a negligible few.

“Art was turned over to the machine. What had been in its inception a device for the coining of myriad plots for popular writers, evolved into a machine-author capable of turning out story after story without repeating itself. Strange, strange, to see those magazines issued by the million copies, to see the books printed, bound, stacked. Useless things! Some day the Mentanicals will turn their attention to them; some day those presses will cease to function. Man’s knell has rung; I see that. Why then do I write? Why do I want what I write to be published in some magazine? I hardly know. In all this vast city we few hundred men and women are the only human beings. But in other cities, at other centers of sustenance, men and women exist. Though I believe this to be true, I cannot verify it. Man in his madness destroyed most of the means of communication, and as for the rest, the airships, the public sending stations, from the first they were in the possession of the Mentanicals. Perhaps it is for those isolated units of humanity that I write. The magazine, the printed word is still a means of communication not quite understood by the Mentanicals. Perhaps…”

That is the story that I read in the third magazine. Not all that the unhappy Mayne Jackson wrote— pages were missing and parts of pages illegible— but all that I could decipher. In telling the story I give it a continuity which in reality it lacked. One wonders as to the fate of Morrow and Marna, mentioned once and then heard of no more, but at the time I gave little thought to them— I was only overwhelmed with the terrible certainty that the story was no work of fiction, but an actual chronicle of what had happened some time in the past, that the cylinders were not automatic robots doing the bidding of human masters, but an alien form of machine life and intelligence— machine life which had thrown off the yoke of man and destroyed him. Useless to look further for intelligent man: all that was left of him was the beast-men among the machines!

Filled with a species of horror at the thought, with sick loathing of the whispering Mentanicals, I straightened up and drew my revolver. I was not myself, I tell you, but animated with a berserk fury. “Damn you!” I cried, “take that— and that!” I pulled the trigger. The roar of the discharge crashed through the huge room, but none of the Mentanicals fell; their metal exteriors were impregnable to such things as bullets. Trembling from the reaction of rage, the feeling of futility, I lifted my hand to hurl the useless weapon at the immobile cylinders, and in the very act of doing so was stiffened into rigidity by the sound of a voice— a human voice! Inexpressibly weird and mournful was that voice, heard so unexpectedly as it was in that place, and in the moment following the explosion of the pistol.

“Oh,” cried the voice, as if talking to itself, “to be chained in this spot, never to leave it, never to know what that noise means! Who is there?” it cried. “Who is there?” And then in tones thrilling with unutterable sadness, “Madman that I am to expect an answer!”

But there was an answer! I shouted in reply. I can hardly recall now what I shouted. Hearing that human voice above the infernal whispering of those Mentanicals was like being reprieved from a horror too great to be borne. And as I shouted incoherently, I sprang in the direction the voice seemed to come from, the cylinders making no effort to oppose my doing so. The wall had appeared smooth and unbroken from a distance, but a nearer view showed an opening which gave entrance to a room that, while small in comparison to the huge one it adjoined, was nevertheless large. It was lighted, as were all the rooms I had seen, by a soft light of which I could never trace the source. I entered the room, calling out, filled with excitement, and then at the sight of what I saw, came to an abrupt pause, for on a low dais occupying the middle of the room was the figure of a man with lolling head. Only this head was free— a massive head with towering brow and wide-spaced eyes. The eyes were dark and filled with sorrow, the face the face of a man in the seventies perhaps— etched with suffering. I stared— stared in astonishment— for the man hung as if crucified on what I at first took for a dully gleaming cross. How can I describe it? I did not see everything in that first glance, of course, nor in the second, though I tell it here as if I had. But his outstretched arms were secured to the cross-piece of his support with metal bands, his legs held in the same fashion. So clear was the glass— or crystal enveloping him from the neck down— that it was some moments before I suspected its presence. I saw the gleaming, transparent tubes through which ran a bluish liquid, the pulsating mechanism at his breast, pumping, pumping, the radiating box at his feet which gave forth a distinct aura; I saw, and could not restrain myself from giving voice to an audible exclamation: “Good God!”

The dark eyes focused on me, the lips moved. “Who are you?” breathed the man.

“My name is Bronson,” I replied; “and you?”

“God help me,” he said. “I am Bane Borgson.”

Bane Borgson! I stared at him, wide-eyed. Where had I heard that name before? My mind groped. Now I had it. In the articles recently read. “You mean…”

“Yes,” he said. “I am that unhappy man, the inventor of the multiple-cell, the creator of the Mentanicals.”

His head lolled wearily. “That was fifteen hundred years ago.”

“Fifteen hundred years!” There was incredulity in my voice.

“Yes,” he said, “I am that old. And for centuries I have been chained as you see me. I was eighty when my heart began to miss. But I did not wish to die. There were many things I wished to accomplish before yielding up life. The world of man was growing bored, indifferent, but we scientists— a handful of us— lived for the gaining of knowledge. This intellect of mine was considered essential by my fellows; so they experimented with me, and fashioned for my use a mechanical heart— you see it pulsing at my breast— and filled my veins with radiant energy instead of blood. Radium,” he said, “that is the basis of the miracle you see; and my body was enclosed in its crystal casing. ‘When you are tired,’ they said, ‘and wish to die…’ But the Debacle came, and the accursed Mentanicals turned against me, and I was left alone, deserted. Before that my friends offered me death. Fool that I was,” cried Bane Borgson, “I refused their gift. ‘No,’ I told them, ‘this is but a temporary upheaval. Man will conquer, must conquer; I await your return.’ So they left me, to hunt for food, and I waited, waited, but they never came back.” Unchecked tears flowed down the withered cheeks. “Never,” he said, “never. And chained in my place I could sense but dimly the tragedy that was overtaking man, the rise to power of the ensouled machines. At first they worshiped me as a god. In some fashion they know that I was their creator and paid me divine honors. A god,” he said, “a god, I who had made the destroyers of my kind! But the centuries passed and the superstition waned. A Mentanical lasts a hundred years and then breaks down. Other Mentanicals are built. Fifteen generations of Mentanicals have come and gone since the Debacle, and now the Mentanicals believe that they were not made by man, but have evolved from simpler mechanical forms over a long period of time. That is, their scholars and scientists believe this, though the old superstition still lingers among thousands. They have salvaged the evidence for this new theory out of the earth and the scrap-heaps of man and have arranged them in chronological order.”

“The museums!” I exclaimed.

He looked at me interrogatively, and I told him of the vast rooms filled with mechanical debris.

“I have never seen them,” he said, “but I know that they exist, from the talk of the Mentanicals.”

He smiled sadly at my amazement.

“Yes.” he said, “I have learned to understand and speak the language of the Mentanicals: through all the long dreary years there was nothing else for me to do. And through all the weary years they have talked to me, asked my advice, treated me with respect, have housed me here; for to some I am still a god-like beast-man, half machine— look at this mechanical heart, the mechanism at my feet— to the scientists I am the missing link between that lower form of life, man, and that higher form of life which culminates in themselves, the machine. Yes,” he said, “the Mentanicals believe that they have evolved through man to their present high state, and I have confirmed them somewhat in this, for in a sense is it not true?”

He paused, with closed eyes; and as I looked at him, pondered his words, scarcely believing the evidence of my senses, I suddenly became aware of the Mentanicals behind me. They had stood there, a silent group, while the man on the dais spoke; now their whispering began, softly, insistently. The head of the man who called himself Bane Borgson lifted, the dark eyes opened. “They are speaking of you,” said Bane Borgson; “they are asking from whence you come. You have never told me that.”

“I have come”, I replied, “from America.”

“America!” he exclaimed. “America has past. There is no America!”

“Not now,” I said, “but in my time…”

“Your time?”

“I come from 1934,” I said, “by means of a time machine.”

“Ah,” he breathed. “I am beginning to know, to understand. So that is what it is.”

I followed the direction of his eyes, I stared, I gaped; for there, not twelve yards to one side of me, stood the time machine! How I had failed to see it on first entering the room it is impossible to say. Perhaps the sight of the man on the dais had riveted my attention to the exclusion of all else. But there it was, the thing I had given up hopes of ever finding again. With an exclamation of joy I reached its side, I touched it with my hand. Yes, it was the time machine and seemingly undamaged. I believe I laughed hysterically. The road to escape was open. With a lightened heart I turned my attention to what was transpiring in the room. Bane Borgson was talking to the Mentanicals and it was uncanny to see his lips forming their incredible language, to hear them answering back. At length he turned to me. “Listen,” he said tensely, “they have never learned to enunciate or understand human speech, but in many ways the Mentanicals are more formidable, more advanced than man in his prime.”

I laughed at this. I was once more my assured, devil-may-care self. “And yet they believe that they evolved from that junk-heap in their museums!”

“And haven’t they?” he asked quietly. “Not in the way they think, perhaps, but still— evolved. Besides you failed to see their museums with articulated bodies of men and beasts. There is much you failed to see!” He paused. “The Mentanicals’ system of thought, of science, is coherent and rational to them; and if there be contradictions, well, does that interfere with them making scientific discoveries transcending those of man? They have long been discussing the phenomenon of time and the feasibility of traveling in it. I know that because I have listened to them. Yet for some reason they have been unable to make a time machine. But you know radio—yes, radio—they have been utilizing discoveries in that field to send messages back in time. Your coming here has not been accidental—do you understand that?— not entirely accidental. By means of their time-radio they have willed your coming, made possible your time machine. Don’t ask me how, I don’t know, not clearly, but they have done it— and you are here! But fortunately it was a creature similar to themselves they expected; to them you are merely an Omo, a beast-man of the machine. So they are puzzled, they don’t quite understand (that is why they have been experimenting with you), but soon they will. Listen,” he said hoarsely, “can’t you realize what a menace to men of the past, of your day, these Mentanicals could be? Oh, your weapons, your machine guns and gas, your powerful explosives! I tell you they would be as nothing against the deadly rays and indescribable forces these Mentanicals could bring against them. Can you gas something that doesn’t breathe, shoot what is practically impervious to bullets, that can blow up, that can explode your powder magazines, your high explosives, at a distance of miles? The Mentanicals would enter your age, not to conquer man—they know little of him, regard him as an inferior creature, an evolutionary hand-over of premachine life—but to expand, take over your cities, to… to… What do I know of their idea of profit, of self-gain and ambition, but doubtless they have it. Listen!”— The great head surged forward, the dark eyes fixed mine compellingly— “You must leap into your time machine before they can prevent, return to your own day and age, at once!”

“And leave you behind?”

“How can you take me with you? That is impossible. Besides I am weary of life, I have caused too much woe and misery to want to live. The Mentanicals refuse me the boon of death, but you will not refuse. That gun in your hand— there are bullets in it yet— one of them here—”

“No! no!”

“For God’s sake, be merciful!”

“I will return for you.”

“You must never return! Do you hear me? Not a second time would you escape. Perhaps it is too late to escape now! Up! up with your gun! Aim at the crystal. Its breaking brings me peace and will distract attention while you leap into your machine. Now! now!”

There was nothing else to do; I saw that in a flash; already the Mentanicals were gliding towards me and once in their invisible grip… I threw up my hand; the gun spoke with a roar; I hear a tinkling crash as of glass, and the same instant vaulted into the seat of the time machine.

It was a close thing, I can tell you, a mighty close thing. They came for me with a rush. The high sides of the passenger-seat protected me for a moment from their deadly touch, but I felt the time machine sway under it, tilt over. In that split second before my hand closed on the lever I saw it all, the rushing Mentanicals, the shattered glass, Bane Borgson sinking into the apathy of death, his great head lolling; the I pulled the lever, pulled it back to Zero!

iii

CAPTAIN Bronson stood up. He looked at us bleakly. “You know the rest. The time machine has been moved. In coming back a portion of it must have materialized inside of a solid— the old stone wall— and caused an explosion. But what I want to know— what has been bothering me at times— did I do right to shoot Bane Borgson? I might have escaped without that.”

“He wanted to die,” said the Doctor at length.

Olson Smith inclined his head. “I don’t see what else you could have done.”

“To have left him there,” I said. “to a life in death, after all those years, no, no, that would have been too horrible!”

Bronson drew a deep breath. “That was my own thought; but I am glad you agree…”

He poured himself a drink.

“If I hadn’t seen you disappear with my own eyes,” said the Doctor.

“I don’t blame you,” said Bronson; “the whole thing sonds like a pipe-dream.”

“A pipe-dream,” I murmured.

“But there is another angle to it,” said Bronson grimly. “What Bane Borgson said about the time-radio influencing the building of the time machine and compelling my coming. Oh, he may have been raving, poor devil, or mistaken, but remember what the Professor said that night at the dinner, about something whispering in his brain? We’ll have to guard against that.”

The Doctor said sadly: “Nothing’ll whisper to the Professor anymore, Captain.”

“What do you mean?”

“I forgot that we’d kept it from you.”

“Kept what?”

“The news of the accident. On that night you took your trip into the future, the time machine struck Professor Stringer on the head.”

“He is dead?”

“Unfortunately, no. But his brain is affected. The Professor will never be the same again.”

Thus the strange and incredible story ends. There is only this to add: Olson Smith is devoting his vast fortune and influence to fighting the manufacture of mechanical brain-cells for machines. “What do you expect to do,” I demand, “change the future?”

“Perhaps,” he answers. “One never knows until he tries.”

So he goes up and down the country, the world, buying up inventions, chemical processes. It has become a mission with him, a mania. But the hands of the future are not changed by invididuals but by social forces, and the genius of man seems determined to lead him into a more mechanized world.

As for the rest, time alone will tell.

________________________

Cumulative Index to Past Masters series

No 21, March 2021

An Author Index to the short stories in the Past Masters series produced by "Pulpmeister", in which the issues are identified as follows:

Past Masters: P

More Past Masters: M

Past Masters Two: 2

Past Masters Three: 3

etc.

Cleve F. Adams

Flowers For Violet 4

Forty Pains 4

A.J. Alan

The Diver  5

My Adventure at Chislehurst  5

The Hair  5

H2, etc.  5

My Adventure In Norfolk  5

W. L. Alden

Hopkins' Safe  15

Monty's Friend  15

Starkweather's Circular Hotel  15

Grant Allen

The Conscientious Burglar  P

Raymund Allen

Allah Knows Best  13

The Black Knight  13

A Happy Solution  16

The Winning Move  13

Mark Allerton

Price of Office  17

Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews:

The Butler  6

Anonymous

Adventure of the Rubber Pipe  11

The Banshee 21

By a Miscalculation  12

A Detective's Story  12

The Fatal Trapdoor  15

Martin Guerre  12

The Walled Chamber  15

Arthur Applin

Overdue  17

Paul Arène

Uncle Sambuq's Fortune  15

Alice and Claude Askew:

Aylmer Vance and the Vampire  M

The Empty Chair  8

In Masquerade  16

Francis Henry Atkins

The Broken Sword  9

The Third Figure 10

Stacy Aumonier

George  M

A Source of Irritation  7

Where Was Wych Street?  8

F Britten Austin

An Affair Of Honour  5

Buried Treasure  5

Diamond Cut Diamond  11

The Fourth Degree  5

The Inca's Treasure  5

The Other Side  5

Well Lost?  11

W. E. Aytoun

The Glenmutchkin Railway  M

John Kendrick Bangs

Mr. Homes Shatters an Alibi  8

Robert Barr

The Great Pegram Mystery  M

H Bedford-Jones

All Talk 20

The Devil’s Fire 21

The Four Red Circles  4

Gallegher of Beaver  4

Harbor Hazard 21

The Luck of a Cowboy  4

J. J. Bell

The Great Corkscrew Mystery  17

Stella Benson

The Man Who Missed The 'Bus  18

J. D. Beresford

Cut-Throat Farm  15

Leslie Beresford

Black Cats For Luck  15

Diamonds for the Duchess  15

Feminine Feathers  15

Light-Fingered Looting  15

The Man in Khaki  15

Murder in Oils  14

Poker Hand  15

Understudy  15

John Bickerdyke

A Fearful Night 12

Earl Derr Biggers

Volcano-Mad 3

Harold Bindloss

The Evicting of Grainger  9

The Tempter  6

Ottwell Binns

Phantom Gold 15

The Prodigal Son, V.C. 11

The Remittance Man  15

M. McDonnell Bodkin

A Bolt from the Blue 7

Diamond Cut Diamond 9

A Drop of Blood 9

Find the Forger  8

Hide And Seek 9

The Matchmaker 6

Murder by Proxy 7

Only a Voice 8

Over-Ruled  8

Safe Bind, Safe Find

The Slump in Silver 9

The Torpedo 8

Under His Own Hand  9

A Wrong Turning  8

Rolfe Boldrewood

Five Men's Lives for One Horse 8

The Mailman's Yarn  8

Charles G. Booth

Stag Party 11, 18

Guy Boothby

The Family Honour 10

The Great Dives Elopement 10

A Strange Goldfield 10

Through Toil and Tribulation 13

Max Brand

The Silent Witness P and 7

Percy James Brebner

The Cobbler 6

The Lady's Glove 6

The Man with the Carnation 6

The Missing Signorina 6

Miles J. Breuer

The Amazing Power  21

Thomas Charles Bridges

Wingfield's White Elephant 10

Heywood Broun

The Fifty-First Dragon  17

K. R. G. Browne

For One Night Only 20

The Soft Spot 20

Two on the Roof 20

Ellis Parker Butler

The Detective Club 7

Geoffrey's Panklaggephone 6

Wadsworth Camp

The Obscure Move 18

Egerton Castle

The Guinea Smuggler 17

Christopher Caudwell

Four Friends and Death  5

J. Storer Clouston

The Fortunate Lord Fabrigas 13

Magic 13

The Trials of Tony 13

Arthur Conan Doyle:

The Disintegration Machine  10

The New Catacomb  P

When the World Screamed  12

Frank Condon

A New Year's Surprise 13

Richard Connell

Flash!  7

Loser Wins All  9

Man of a Few Words  9

One-Trip Darling  5

The Solid Gold Article  9

Dorothea Conyers

Sir Hector Devereux's Bet 17

When Rogues Fall Out 17

Mrs. George Corbett

Spoofing a Detective  7

Heath Crichton

A Country House Surprise  15

The Gold Mummy  15

The Midnight Guest 15

The Mystery of the Hotel Royal  15

Colonel Henry Curties

A Summer Night's Weird  6

James Oliver Curwood

The Match 20

Richard Harding Davis

In the Fog  9

Aidan de Brune

The Empty Match Box  P

The Fifth Domino (as by John Morris)  12

The Gift to See Ourselves as Others See Us  8

Sir George B. Douglas, Bart.

The Adonis of Slagborough  17

Patience  15

Peter Pirnie's Prison-House  16

George Allan England

Arson in the Jungle  10

The Longest Side  14

Glyn Evans

"The Man Who Was—"  5

Gwyn Evans

The Croucher 18

Francis Flagg

The Dancer in the Crystal 21

The Machine Man of Ardathia 21

The Mentanicals 21

The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds 21

The Superman of Dr Jukes 21

J S Fletcher

Comedy of the Grand Canal  8

The Cracksman's Catspaw  7

The Honour of Two  16

The Yellow Dog  P

Sewell Ford

The Impressing of Looney Fipps  17

R Austin Freeman

The Great Portrait Mystery  P

Jacques Futrelle

Room 666   14

Tom Gallon

The Vengeance of Adam Rook  11

John Galsworthy

Acme  3

J. U. Giesy

The Gravity Experiment 21

Not on the Bill

Guy Gilpatric

Gabriel's Trumpet 18

The Glasgow Smasher 21

The Lost Limerick  20

Mary, Queen of Scots  18

Scotch and Water 20

Kenneth Grahame

The Burglars  16

George Griffith

Five Hundred Carats  18

Harlan Halsey

Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist 18

William H Hamby

Cal Wood's First Case  16

Cosmo Hamilton

Proofs of  Guilt 10

The Mirror of Nature 12

The Silent Witness 5

Frances Noyes Hart

"Contact!"  18

Julian Hawthorne

Greaves' Disappearance 20

Floyd Hamilton Hazard

Front!  13

Headon Hill

Behind the Cupboard 16

The Dragon Casket 16

The Fierce Eyes 16

The Gunman from the Underworld 16

The Sapient Monkey  9

Robert J Horton:

The Ninety-Ninth Proposal 4

Fergus Hume

Tragic Voyage  14

The Seaside Girl 15

The Blue Vase  15

C J Cutcliffe Hyne

The Anarchist's Scheme 6

Anchored 10

Beauty and the Beast 4

Confounded 3

Gregory Of Byzantium 3

Guaranteed Countess  8

A Lottery Duel 3

A Marriage of Convenience 3

The Men in Stone 3

Mrs. Seal McIntosh 3

Paradise Coal Boat 3

The Perfumer 3

A QC's Confession 3

The Ransom 4

The Settler-ess 3

The Ship-Breaker's Yard 3

The Tragedy of a Third Smoker P

The Traitor: 3

The Trinidad Treasure 3

A. A. Irvine:

The Fountain of Light 5

Violet Jacob

Secret Intelligence  17

W. W. Jacobs

A Will and a Way 21

Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace:

Mr. Belton's Immunity 7

The Tea-Leaf P

Lord Kilmarnock

A Man's Hand  14

Albert Kinross

He Stoops To Conquer  21

Otis Adelbert Kline:

The Corpse on the Third Slab 20

The Phantom Wolf-Hound 4

Stephen Leacock:

The Prince of Wurttenburg P

William Le Queux

Cheating The Spies!  14

The Mysterious Englishman  16

The Open Eye 11

The Secret of the Fox Hunter  17

Sheer Profit  P

The Wrong Road  17

Bruno Lessing

As It Happened To Moey  16

Moritsky's Ward  16

John Luther Long

Madame Butterfly 14

Sir William Magnay, Bt.

Mrs. Brotherton's Adventure  17

William J. Makin

Flight From Teheran 8

Four Guests 7

The Horror of the Loch 7

Murder off the Map 7

Supper at Midnight 5

Arthur W. Marchmont

The Bolchester Bank Robbery  17

Don Marquis

The Locked  Box  17

Richard Marsh

Giving him his Chance  16

"I Have Killed a Man!"  16

The Other Man's Boots  16

A E W Mason

The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel P

The Ginger King P

L T Meade

Warned by a Mouse 10

L. T. Meade and Clifford Halifax

A Doctor's Dilemma  11

A Race with the Sun 10

L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace

The Arrest of Captain Vandaleur 10

The Dead Hand 3

The Face in the Dark 7

Finger Tips 3

The Secret of Emu Plain 10

Sir Penn Carlyll's Engagement 3

The Yellow Flag 10

Alice Duer Miller

Slow Poison  18

Lucy Gertrude Moberly

Black Paws 6

C. S. Montanye

Come Back to Aaron 14

Cricket's Last Hop 18

Death With Music 14

Fog is Necessary  14

Frozen Stiff 18

Hoodwinked 18

Ink  13

Ivan’s Foe 13

Merry Month of Mayhem 14

Opals Are Unlucky 18

A Shock for the Countess 13

This Will Kill You 13

Wings For An Angel 18

Charles Leonard Moore

The Lion Rug 16

F. Frankfort Moore

The Crock 17

Joan's Two-seater  17

W. C. Morrow

The Mated Rubies of Kyat Pyen  16

Lawrence Mott

Nab  13

Talbot Mundy

Making £10,000 3

Edith Nesbit

The Mystery of the Semi-Detached M

William Edward Norris

The Willingham Van Dyke 6

David Wright O'Brien

The Money Machine M

Rats in the Belfry 9

Owen Oliver

Destiny  18

Her Account  6

The Last Laugh 6

A Rapid Conveyance  7

The Specialist 6

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Lady of the Morass 9

The Man Who Lifted the Blind  16

Mr. Senn's Past P

A Royal Dilemma 3

A Strange Conspiracy 13

The Tower Ghost 8

"Ouida"

The Eldest Born 13

John Oxenham

The Missing Q.C.s  18

Frank L Packard

Corporal Bob  12

Barry Pain

Albert Theodore Parish 11

Amphistamium Formosum  10

Clubs and Hearts  7

The Dog's Understudy 11

Hasheesh 11

"If"  13

Rose Rose 18

Some Imitations 6

Twelve Minutes 6

Hugh Pendexter

The Dogs of Purgatory 20

Marjorie Pickthall

Mannering's Men 6

Marmaduke Pickthall

The Poultry Yard  16

Lilian Quiller-Couch

An Exciting Week  16

Mabel Quiller-Couch

A Condoned Crime  11

Frederic Reddale

Galleon Gold 12

C E Bechhofer Roberts

The English Filter 7

The Last Lap 8

The Man Who Lost His Memory 7

Mrs Carnaby's Dairies 8

Murder of a Matchmaker 8

The Mystery of the Chaffeur's Suicide 7

The Radium Robbery 8

Virgin Snow 7

Morley Roberts

The Anarchist 12

The Anticipator 12

The Arbitrator 12

An Edited Story 12

The Figure-head of the "White Prince" 12

The Judgment Of Paris 12

A Man's Death 12

Her Memory 7

A Pawned Kingdom 12

The Pedestal 6

Round the World in a Hurry 12

Two Men and a River 12

The Wedding Eve 12

William J Rollins Jr

Chicago Confetti  21

Clarence Rook

The Stir Outside the Café Royal  17

Theodore Roosevelt

The Wendigo M

Anthony M. Rud

Green for Danger 20

The Molten Bullet 20

Ooze 7

A Square of Canvas 20

Damon Runyon

Tobias the Terrible P

Charles  ('Chic') Sale:

The Specialist M

"Sapper" (H C McNeile):

Will You Walk Into My Parlour? P

Dallas Lore Sharp

The Professor's Panther 16

Perley Poore Sheehan

The Hands of Killian 12

The Hank of Yarn 20

The Murdered Wife 11

Spider Tong  M

The “Smuggler’s Daughter”—Five Reels 12

Tiger Trail 4

Adam Hull Shirk

The Bearded Men 20

Mandrake 20

Osiris 4

George R. Sims

Doctor Mazeppa  18

Lance Warrener's Crime 11

The Man With the Wild Eyes 20

The Silver Fox 18

Under the Mistletoe Bough  18

Howard Dwight Smiley

Smokeless Tobacco  16

Thorne Smith

Yonder's Henry! M

John Philip Sousa

The Conspirators M

Andrew Soutar

Courage  20

The Doctor Takes a Hand  6

The Story without a Title  16

Henry Spicer

Called To The Rescue 18

F St Mars

Shadows  16

There and Back  8

Arthur Stringer

In the Wireless Room 18

Halliwell Sutcliffe

At The Road Top  17

Annie Swan

Aunt Caroline  14

Sir Basil Thomson

The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser  P

Guy Thorne

The Flirt 10

Major Marlowe's System  13

On Christmas Night  13

Puzzle Phyllis  6

Reward of Revenge  12

Unforeseen 5

Katharine Tynan

His Lordship and Kitty-for-Short  17

A Knight-Errant 21

E. Charles Vivian

Locked In P

Other Gods 6

Edgar Wallace

Bill of Scotland Yard  4

Christmas Eve at the China Dog M

A Present for Evans M

The Slane Mystery P

"Waif Wander" (Mary Helena Fortune)

The Dead Man in the Scrub  17

The Dead Witness  17

Monk's Mark 13

The Phantom Hearse 10

The Spirits of the Tower 10

Henry Brereton Marriott Watson

The Devil of the Marsh M

Mrs. Baillie Weaver

The Scarecrow  16

F A M Webster

No Leopards in Surbiton 5

The Schimmel Sets the Pace 6

The Secret of the Singular Cipher 6

Carolyn Wells

The Silent Model  17

Ethel Lina White

Cheese P

Wax Works 7

Fred M. White

According to the Statute M

The Azoff Diamonds P

Victor L. Whitechurch

Stopping an Execution 12

Raoul Whitfield

Death in the Pasig 14

The Great Black  14

Inside Job  14

West of Guam 20

Oscar Wilde

The Canterville Ghost  8

Valentine Williams

Blind Guess M

C N and A M Williamson

The Dazzle Plot  8

John Strange Winter

Hunks 12

P. C. Wren

Simple 6

May Wynne

The Tiara   16

Leroy Yerxa

Through the Asteroids— to Hell! 15

Arthur Leo Zagat

Beyond the Spectrum  M

Israel Zangwill

Cheating the Gallows  9

Table of Contents

1: The Glasgow Smasher / Guy Gilpatric

2: The Dancer in the Crystal / Francis Flagg

3: The Superman of Dr Jukes / Francis Flagg

4: A Will and a Way / W. W. Jacobs

5: Chicago Confetti / William J Rollins Jr

6: The Devil’s Fire / H Bedford-Jones

7: Harbor Hazard / H. Bedford-Jones

8: The Gravity Experiment / J. U. Giesy

9: The Machine Man of Ardathia / Francis Flagg

10: The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds / Francis Flagg

11: A Knight-Errant / Katharine Tynan

12: He Stoops To Conquer / Albert Kinross

13: Not on the Bill / J. U. Giesy

14: The Banshee / Anonymous

15: The Amazing Power / Miles J. Breuer

16: The Mentanicals / Francis Flagg

Cumulative Index