Time Travel Omnibus, page 289
“That’s better,” Garr said. “Tell Emerson that he is to have his device in operation tonight at one minute past midnight, without fail. This is of the greatest importance. At one minute past midnight, without fail. Under no circumstances is he to test it before that time!”
This didn’t make sense to me but that didn’t make any difference. A lot of the things Garr told me to do didn’t make any sense. I saw only parts of his business; he took care that neither I nor anyone else ever saw the whole picture. He made me repeat the message, to make sure I had it right.
“Is that all, sir?” I asked.
“One other thing,” Garr answered. “Your job around here is to obey orders, not to question them. If you ever defy me again—” his black eyes blazed with anger—“you know what will happen to you! Do you understand me clearly, Kelsey?”
“Y—yes, sir,” I said.
“Then get out!” he barked.
I got out. I was so hot I don’t remember getting in the elevator, and when I got out on the main floor I was still so nearly blind from helpless anger that I bumped into a man without noticing him.
“Don, you old war dog,” he said. “You ought to notice where you are going.”
I LOOKED up. Doug Rommer was grinning at me. He was wearing a floppy felt hat, his shirt collar was frayed, he was smoking a foul pipe. He hadn’t been smoking a pipe the first time I met him, but I’ll bet he had been wearing the same grin, although I hadn’t been able to see it. I met him in Kamchatka. This was in June 1943, exactly three years ago, when the Japs were learning the full price they were going to pay for Pearl Harbor, for Singapore, for Java, for Burma and Bataan. They didn’t like that price either, they didn’t like it a little bit, when their own skies were full of bombers and the price of Pearl Harbor was coming out of their hide. They paid it, though, and maybe, a hundred years from now, some Jap will be born who will not run a mile when he hears the word MacArthur spoken. Maybe!
I was going down over Kamchatka when I met Rommer, riding in the seat of a P-47, on patrol with a squadron. There were a lot of fuzzy clouds in the sky, ideal hiding places for Zeros.[1] There were Zeros in them, too. Suddenly the sky was full of Jap planes and with equal quickness it was full of dog fights as we squared off and met them. I don’t remember much about the fight. It was just another skirmish. The P-47 had two thousand horses in its nose and lots of guns. After a few minutes, I found myself off to one side, with a dead Jappo twisting like a falling leap as he went to hell. The main fight was miles away by now. I headed toward it. I never did see the Zero come out of the clouds and I didn’t know a Jap plane was near until a cannon shot set my motor on fire. There was only one thing to do—bail out. I did it.
I got out without a scratch. My chute opened. My poor plane went floating down, leaving a long trail of smoke behind it. I saw it crash and explode. The loss of the plane didn’t matter much. For every one that went down, the factories back home were making four to replace it. With the rugged hills of Kamchatka below me, I was safe enough.
Then the Zero came back. I could see him coming. He was in a long slant headed straight for me. There was no doubt about his intentions. He was going to shoot me. I still remember with horror those long seconds during which the Jap plane lanced toward me. I wake up at night in a cold sweat with the memory of that Zero slanting at me.
Off to the left, I saw something else—an American plane. I remember trying to scream at him to look in my direction. The Zero was getting closer, lining up so he would get me with the first burst.
THEN the American plane almost lost its wings as the pilot jerked it in my direction. It flipped around like a leaf in a high wind. The pilot had seen me. He was coming to rescue me. I held my breath. It was a close race and my life was the prize. Because he had two thousand horses in the nose of his ship, the American pilot won it. He caught the Zero just before the Zero got me—and blasted the Jap plane out of the sky! Then he rode herd on me all the way to the ground. I can close my eyes and see him yet, grimly circling me, daring any Jap to turn up. To me, he looked like an angel straight from heaven. When I had landed, he waggled his wings at me and went tearing off. I made my way back to our forces.
That was how I met Doug Rommer. He was the pilot of the plane that saved my life. After the war had ended, he had returned to Chicago, but because danger had become necessary for his existence, he had found it hard to settle down. He had become a private detective, one of the best in the business, a grinning, devil-may-care sleuth who asked no odds of danger.
He grinned at me now, and. as he saw the expression on my face, the grin faded into a thoughtful frown.
“What’s wrong, Don?” he asked. “You look as if you had lost your best friend.”
“It’s scarcely as bad as that,” I answered. “Doug, how are you? How’s tricks and things?”
“Everything is fine,” he said. “Don, I was just coming up to see you. I want you to help me.”
He could have the shirt off my back and he knew it. He could have my last dime, my last cigarette. Hell, if it hadn’t been for him, I would be pushing up Kamchatkan daisies now! “You want me to help you!” I laughed. “Hell, Doug, you know you can have anything I own. What’s on your mind?”
He should have laughed then; a laugh always came easy to him. But he didn’t laugh. He looked keenly at me. “I’m on the trail of a blackmailer,” he said quietly. “Personally, I think this fellow ought to be hanged. I think maybe you can help me hang him, if you will?”
“If I will?” I echoed. I was a little startled. So far as I knew, none of my acquaintances were blackmailers, but if they were and if Doug Rommer asked me to help him catch them, I would certainly do what he asked. “Anything I can do, I will do,” I said. “Who is this fellow?”
“His name,” Rommer said, looking straight at me, “is E.M. Garr!”
“What?” I gasped.
“E.M. Garr!” Rommer repeated. “He pretends to be an astrologer but he is, in reality, a blackmailer—”
“SHUT up!” I hissed. “Doug, you don’t know what you’re saying!” I was looking frantically around us. The lobby was crowded with people passing in and out of the building. Any of them might hear what Rommer was saying. I did not know definitely, but I had strong suspicions that Garr maintained a strong-arm squad. Certain husky men with hard faces came and went at odd times. They never stopped at my reception desk and asked me if Garr was in, and Garr let them out the back way himself. I had a hunch they frequently came and went the back way without my knowledge. Any of the people in the crowded lobby might be in Garr’s pay and might report what Rommer had said.
“I do know what I’m saying,” Rommer repeated. “I think Garr is a blackmailer and I’m out to prove it.”
He didn’t give a damn if he was overheard. That was the kind of a guy he was. He called a spade a spade, and if anybody didn’t like it, they could darned well lump it.
“You can’t say that!” I hissed. “Do you want to be found up some alley with a couple of bullets through your guts! Shut up, Doug, for Pete’s sake!”
I was frantic and I tried to walk away. Rommer saw how scared I was and he dropped the subject. But he walked along with me and I knew he wanted to talk to me.
“I’m going to see an inventor,” I said, hailing a cab outside. “You can go along with me. We can talk on the way.”
“An inventor?” he said. “His name wouldn’t be Emerson, would it?”
“Yes. But how the devil did you know?”
“I didn’t,” he answered, grinning. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, be going to see his secretary instead, would you, Don?”
I stared at him in open-mouthed amazement. In the past year I had been in Emerson’s laboratory dozens of times, but to tell the strict truth, I didn’t go there to see the inventor. There was a girl who worked for him as a sort of combination secretary and lab assistant. Her name was Lucy Trent. There may be more beautiful girls in the world but I have not seen them. To be frank, since I first saw Lucy, I have not noticed other girls and for all I know, there may not be any other girls on earth. There aren’t for me, anyhow.
“H—how did you know about Lucy?” I asked.
“A good detective knows everything,” he said, grinning. Then the grin left his face. “About Garr, now. Will you help me?”
“I—” That was all I could say. The words stuck in my throat. They wouldn’t come.
“Will you?”
“Doug, you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I know I’m asking you to help me catch a rat,” he said grimly. “If you have any false ideas of loyalty to an employer—”
“No!” I shouted. “He employs me but that doesn’t make any difference. I would help you—”
“But you won’t? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Doug, I can’t. I’ll do anything under the sun for you, except this. I can’t—”
WE were in the cab, going south on State Street. Rommer looked grim. “Are you mixed up in this business too, Don?” he asked.
“Doug,” I said desperately, “to the best of my knowledge, Garr is not a blackmailer. If he is, I know nothing of it—”
“He is!” Rommer said. “Are you in it, too? Is that why you won’t help me?”
His voice was tense and the hot tones of anger showed in it.
“No,” I said. “I’m no blackmailer. You didn’t need to ask that question, Doug, and you know it.”
He squirmed a little then, and traces of an apology showed in the tones of his voice. “Then why don’t you help me?”
“Because—Doug, I can’t!” Perhaps I wailed the words. I know there was sweat on the palms of my hands and sweat running down my face. I would have given anything to help Rommer, but I knew what would happen if I did, what would happen if I even told him why I couldn’t help him.
He was inexorable. “Why?” he said. “I can’t tell you that, either.”
He looked at me. His face was grave. “Don, if you have gotten into something that you can’t get out of, and if I can do anything for you, you know you have only to ask me.”
“I know,” I said desperately. “But there is nothing you or anyone else can do.”
“Is it as bad as that?”
“It’s worse than that.”
He shut up then, but when he looked at me there was compassion on his face. I knew he was wondering what hold Garr had over me but he didn’t ask any more questions, for which I was grateful.
“Who hired you to investigate Garr?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer, evading the issue by changing the subject, and I didn’t press him. We dropped the subject entirely. Rommer seemed to sweep the whole matter from his mind but I could tell he was still thinking about it.
One thing he had said was damned important to me. Garr was a blackmailer! This was strictly news to me. Oddly, if Garr was a blackmailer, there was a thin chance that this fact might open a way for me to escape from the spot I was in.
Night had already fallen over Chicago. It was early evening, barely dusk in fact, and the street lights were just coming on. Emerson’s laboratory was in an old converted residence on a short street just south of the Loop.
When we pulled into the short street, we found it was blocked by a squad car. Two cops in uniform were busy trying to catch some small animal. It was an alert, quick-moving little beast about as big as a dog. It wasn’t a dog. It had a long bushy tail, pointed ears, a long muzzle, and hooves. The cab driver pulled to one side and stopped.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Darned if I know,” Rommer said. He sounded puzzled. “If I didn’t know it was impossible, I would say it is a little horse.”
It did look like a horse except that it wasn’t as big, even, as a pony. It was a very sagacious little beast and the cops were having the devil’s own time trying to catch it. Every time they got it cornered it dodged around them, its little hooves clattering on the pavement. Finally it dodged into a alcove from which there was no escape and they did catch it. They came carrying it back to their squad car.
“What have you got there?” I called to them.
“Don’t know, buddy,” one of them answered. “We were cruising by and we saw it in the street. It looks like a pygmy horse, except that there isn’t any such thing. We’re going to take it over to the zoo and see if they know what it is.”
A pygmy horse playing on the streets of Chicago! I dismissed it from my mind and went on to the lab to see Emerson and deliver my message, Rommer waiting in the cab for me. I had more important things on my mind than a horse that hadn’t grown up, or so I very casually thought at the time.
CHAPTER II
The Shadow in the Laboratory
EMERSON’S laboratory was in an old converted residence. Affixed to the wall near the front door was a brass plate with the words: RING BELL FOR ADMITTANCE.
You could ring that bell for hours and never get an answer. It was strictly a brush-off to discourage salesmen, reporters, publicity hounds, and all the rest of that brazen tribe who will, if given an opportunity, intrude themselves on every person of any prominence. If you wanted to see Emerson you went around the house to a large brick addition he had built on to the rear and simply walked in. Once in, you could stay as long as you wanted. He was too kind-hearted to throw anybody out.
As I took the passage that led to the rear I saw that lights were burning in the laboratory. If the lights were on, the inventor was in. For that matter, he was always in. I could see his shadow thrown on the frosted glass windows. It was a grotesque thing, huge and without shape. I whistled, on the odd chance that Lucy was still there and would hear me. The shadow twisted at the sound of my whistle, then disappeared.
I walked into the laboratory and almost stepped on Emerson. He was lying face downward on the floor, one hand outstretched, at the side of the workbench that ran the full length of the room. An over-turned stool lay near him.
My first shocked thought was that he had suffered a heart attack while working and had fallen off the stool. He was an old man and he had already had one or two bouts with his heart. I stooped to pick him up—and recoiled in horror.
He was lying in a pool of blood.
“Mr. Emerson! What happened?” I gasped.
Not until then did I notice that he was supporting himself on one elbow. His face was only two or three inches off the floor and he seemed not to have the strength to lift it higher. He didn’t notice me. A look of desperation on his face, he was staring at his outstretched hand. The hand was moving slowly. Emerson was writing in blood on the floor a single word:
RMOAHAL
He was using his own blood as ink, his index finger for a pen!
There were a thousand things that I should have done. I can think of them, now, easily enough but at the moment, I was paralyzed. My mind simply would not work. I had read of murdered men writing a last message in their own blood but I had never expected to see it happening right before my own eyes. I dropped to my knees beside him.
“Mr. Emerson! Was there an accident? Are you badly hurt?”
I took hold of him, intending to pick him up and carry him to a bed. He cried out in pain when my fingers touched him, then he recognized me and gasped my name.
“Don’t touch me!” he whispered. “The pain—too much—”
“But I want to help you.”
“You can’t help me. Nobody can help me. Done for—”
“Was it an accident?”
“No accident! Rmoahal!” He pointed toward the word he had written in blood on the floor.
I thought he was out of his head.
Rmoahal was a crazy combination of letters that had no meaning. I tried again to pick him up but he screamed when I touched him.
“Don’t touch me, Don! Can’t stand—to be touched!”
“What happened, sir?” I begged.
“Garr!” he whispered.
“You mean Garr did this to you?” I demanded.
“No,” he answered. “Rmoahal. I was—working on invention for Garr. Finished invention today. Tested it. Mesohippus. Went in wrong direction. Don’t understand it myself. Accident. Tell Garr—got Rmoahal. Danger, Don. Warn Garr not to use—machine—” He managed to lift himself on one elbow and looked across the room to a huge machine that looked a little like a cyclotron. I had seen the machine before. Emerson had been working on it for months.
“Don’t let anyone use machine, Don,” he whispered. “Don’t let anybody! Danger—danger—time—”
Strength was ebbing out of him. Blankness was appearing in his eyes. He seemed to gather himself for one final message.
“Stay out of time, Don,” he whispered. “Make everybody stay out of time. Destroy—machine—”
HE SIGHED. There was something child-like in the way he laid his head on his arm, something that made me think of a six-year-old boy, all tired out with play, lying down for a little nap. Emerson was not a six-year-old; he was an old man and the nap he was taking was the nap that never ends.
There was silence in the laboratory, complete silence. In the far distance I could hear the dim, never-ceasing hum, that is the noise of Chicago muttering to itself. It is composed of the honk of taxicabs, the shrill of whistles of the police directing traffic, the clatter of street cars, the rumble of the elevated trains. But here in the lab there was silence. Emerson was dead. His body was one of the most horrible sights I have ever seen, not because he was dead, but because of something that had happened to him before he died, something that had caused his death.
His body had been twisted! His death had not been caused by a bullet and no knife had been plunged into his vitals. He looked as if he had been caught in a gigantic vise and squeezed in a dozen different directions at the same time. His arms, his legs, had been bent, and then bent again, and again. He must have suffered terrible agony. I could not begin to guess what had killed him. The weapon—if a weapon had been used—was beyond the range of my experience.
I got to my feet. There was nothing I could do for Emerson. And I kept remembering I had seen a shadow in this laboratory just before I entered it. At the time I had thought it was the shadow of the inventor, thrown by some odd light effect against the glass of the windows. But I had come directly into the lab and found Emerson on the floor. He couldn’t have caused that shadow.
