Four Astounding Novellas

by Nat Schachner

  She was talking to him now in exasperated tones. She was due to go on in the opening scene of the matinée performance—a great, scantily clad chrysanthemum, of which she was an outer petal. It lacked ten minutes of curtain time, and they were standing backstage in the cavernous theater.

  “Listen to me, Tony!” Her voice was hard, compact. “I’m sick an’ tired o’ being made a fool of. I’m a good-natured girl, but you’re giving me the run-around. A girl can’t afford to waste her youth for nothing. You promised me that string of sparklers over two months now, and you’re as full of excuses as a fish is of water. I’m through. Go out ’n’ get ’em, or don’t come back. See?”

  Anthony Marshall winced. In the first place he was forty-five, with an alarmingly protruding stomach and more than a hint of gout, the result of years of good living, drinking, and idling. In the second place, he had no money. His bank had enforced notice of that on him when his last check bounced back.

  “I’m sorry about that, baby,” he pleaded. “I’ll get it for you soon. Just now I’m a bit short. My broker—”

  “T’blazes with your broker,” she broke in rudely. “You heard me, and it goes. The sparklers, or we’re through.”

  It was unfortunate of course that both of them had received similar operations. In the circumstances, the radiations of their respective wills neutralized each other and left them in status quo.

  A man hurried by, agitated, intent on important things. It was Cary himself, the great producer. Marshall knew him slightly; it was his business to know every one.

  “Hello, Cary!” he greeted.

  The other merely grunted, detoured, was on his way again.

  Anthony Marshall was a wit. He looked at the sullen beauty again and shouted after the retreating producer.

  “Hi there, Cary! How about giving me a million dollars? Miss La Rue claims she can’t get along on less.”

  The man stopped dead in his tracks. The noise of the approaching curtain was deafening. Something had gone wrong in the opening number that needed his urgent attention. Yet he turned back to Marshall, face set in a strange rigidity, impelled by invisible forces.

  “I—I’m sorry, Marshall, I can’t give you that much. I’m not as rich as people think. This show put me in the red a lot.”

  Anthony stared at him bitterly. The joke was being turned on him.

  “Now let me see,” Cary continued intently, “I have around thirty-five thousand in the bank—I can give you that—my show holdings and houses could realize even now about a hundred and eighty thousand—maybe—”

  Marshall cut him short. He must turn the joke back again on Cary somehow.

  “O. K., old man,” he said genially. “Never mind the show business or the houses. Just write me out a check for thirty-five thou’ and we’ll call it quits.”

  “Right away, Mr. Marshall,” Cary said, and took a folder check book from his inside pocket, unclipped his fountain pen, rested the book on a near-by table, and began to write.

  “There it is,” he said at last, ripping the check from the stub, and handing it to Marshall.

  Marshall took it gingerly, glanced at it with suspicious eyes. He expected to see staring him in the face some comical remarks.

  He looked at it again. His hand trembled. It was a real, sure-enough check for thirty-five thousand drawn to the order of Anthony Marshall and signed—Lucian Cary.

  He clutched the producer by the shoulder, spoke hoarsely: “What’s the joke?”

  “Joke?” The man was surprised. “None at all. It’s what you asked for.”

  “The check is good?”

  “The check is good.”

  Anthony looked at his wrist watch—twenty to three. The bank closed at three. Lucky it was only five blocks down Broadway. If only he could get it certified!

  “Hey, big boy, where are you going?” Alison La Rue yelled after his rapidly moving back.

  Marshall flung over his shoulder: “See you to-night, after the show. The necklace is practically yours.”

  Then he was gone.

  III.

  Alison La Rue did a lot of heavy thinking during the matinée. It was hard, unaccustomed work, so it was but natural that when the living chrysanthemum began to rotate rapidly to the music, one of the yellow petals was woefully out of step. For which she was duly and expertly excoriated by the stage manager. But she did not care; her mind was on other things.

  Immediately following the performance, she waylaid Lucian Cary, put on her best kittenish smile. “Hello, Mr. Cary! I’d like to talk to you.”

  Cary had deep pouches under his eyes; he seemed to be in a state of high excitement, but at her request he turned rigid, said: “Of course, Miss La Rue.”

  “You were very good to Tony Marshall. I think you’re a swell feller.”

  The coy remark had unexpected results. At the mention of Marshall’s name, Cary’s face swirled with blood until it looked as if he would have a stroke. “That dirty so and so!” he screamed. “He did me out of thirty-five thou’. I must have been drunk. And he got it certified, too, cleaned me out, before I woke up and tried to stop payment. Just wait till I see that guy.”

  Alison, or Alice, was astounded. Her scheme was being knocked into a cocked hat. She started to slink away.

  “You wanted to speak to me, didn’t you?”

  Something urged her on then. “I’d like to get a better part, Mr. Cary. I’ve got the looks an’ the figure, an’ everything.”

  Cary’s face was a set mask, the kind that was to become a familiar sight around New York and elsewhere very shortly. When he spoke it seemed as if it were some one else, something not a part of himself.

  “Certainly, Miss La Rue. I’ve had my eye on you for a long time. Now let me see. I’m not satisfied with Gordon in the lead part; suppose you take off a week to rehearse it and I’ll put you on in her place.”

  The stage, the theater, the earth itself seemed to rock and sway around her. She, in the leading rôle! In her wildest dreams she hadn’t thought—the guy was crazy—hadn’t even made a pass at her—but—

  She looked at him sharply. “I can count on that?”

  “The contract will be drawn to-morrow. I can’t change my mind.”

  Therein he spoke the truth. She had clinched his continuing obedience by her last command. And, exactly one week later, electricians climbed the parquet in front of the theater, took out the bulbs that spelled the name of Cissie Gordon, and rearranged them to read “Alison La Rue.”

  And that same night, a bewildered audience saw the most atrocious performance that had ever disgraced a Broadway theater. Poor Alison cavorted around the stage in the belief that she was a wow; her voice was cracked and off key, her acting terrible, her coyness flat. In short, by the time the final curtain had fallen on a perspiring, enraged cast, and an equally enraged audience was pell-melling out of the theater, a smash hit had been converted into a total flop.

  Alison La Rue sulked and sobbed in her tents. She hadn’t learned the trick, the power that was in her. Had she commanded the audience to believe she was Sarah Bernhardt, Eleanore Duse, and Katherine Cornell rolled into one, they would have turned handsprings and gone out to proclaim it to a cockeyed world.

  Craig Wentworth paced restlessly up and down the floor of his laboratory. Those few competent to judge knew him as an extraordinary physicist, who, with little or no backing, had opened new fields of thought.

  Dr. Knopf watched his pacings with alert, anxious eyes. He did not like the feverish brittleness to his friend’s speech, nor the content of it.

  Wentworth whirled on him. His big body was taut, his eyes burned with strange fires.

  “You don’t believe a word I’m saying?” He was careful not to demand belief.

  Dr. Knopf folded his hands judicially. He was an excellent neurologist and all-around medical practitioner.

  “Well,” he hesitated and weighed his words carefully, “it does sound a bit incredib
le. All those instances are—”

  “Go over them again,” Wentworth said eagerly, “and you’ll see they’re not mere coincidences.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Ten days ago a meek, henpecked bank clerk tells his wife to go jump in the lake. She does it, and declares afterward she felt something force her to obey.”

  Dr. Knopf shrugged. “We run up against many such cases in our practice,” he murmured. “Sudden self-assertion on the part of a habitually downtrodden worm so surprises the bully that it has a real hypnotic effect.”

  “Granted!” Wentworth said impatiently. “Take the next, though. A petty politician, a nobody, forces Halloran, the big shot in this man’s town, to make him police commissioner. Same day, mind you, as item number one.”

  The neurologist shrugged again. “Blackmail,” he suggested. “The little fellow had something on Halloran.”

  “There were more. Take the case of Alison La Rue; a cheap chorus girl, of the dumb gold-digger type, forcing her way into the lead of a smash hit and closing it up the same night. Cary had the reputation of being a very shrewd producer.”

  This time Dr. Knopf smiled. “Such instances are not rare in the history of the stage,” he pointed out. “I am told the lady in question had a certain amount of blond looks.”

  “Sure!” Wentworth retorted sarcastically. “And so did Anthony Marshall who nicked the same smart showman to the tune of thirty-five thousand dollars. Cary put up a yell the next day for its return, claiming mental coercion—even started suit. Two days later the suit was quietly dropped.”

  Dr. Knopf rose and moved thoughtfully past a row of motors. “Now that,” he remarked, “borders on the inexplicable. Knowing Broadway producers as I do, I’d say that any one who could get a dime out of them was using much more than mental coercion.”

  “You refuse to be serious,” Wentworth said. “These are not coincidences. Every one of them occurred on the same day—October 26th. These were all instances I got out of the newspapers; the Lord knows if there are others which haven’t as yet broken into print.”

  “You’re trying to insinuate,” Dr. Knopf remarked evenly, “that something happened to all of these persons simultaneously? Something that gave them the power to command whatever they desired, force other mortals not so gifted to do their biddings; a sort of Aladdin’s lamp, in other words.”

  “Yes.” Wentworth’s tone was almost defiant.

  Dr. Knopf went up to him, put his hand kindly on his shoulder.

  “We’re dealing in miracles now, my boy. I may say without undue modesty that I am as familiar with the workings of the human mind, and all the mental phenomena lumped under the generic terms of hypnotism and telepathy, as any one in the field. I tell you as positively as I know how that there is nothing to your theory; that it is contrary to all the laws of psychology; that every example you have given me can be explained rationally and without recourse to supernatural effects.”

  Wentworth took a deep breath, exhaled. “I didn’t tell you everything,” he said quietly. “For example, why I happened to go searching through the newspaper files for that particular date.”

  Dr. Knopf cast him a quick glance. “I had thought of that,” he admitted. “I could give you a long Latin term for such a—”

  “Mania,” Wentworth finished for him. “No; I’m not insane. Suppose I were to tell you that I have that same power myself; that that was the reason I searched for other examples.”

  The doctor was on his feet instantly. “Craig, I’ve been thinking of running down to the Florida keys for a few weeks’ tarpon fishing. Finest sport in the world. Why not come along with me—I get crabby as hell if I’m alone.”

  “So you do think it’s overwork and nerves—polite words, aren’t they?” Wentworth said calmly. “Well, I’m going to prove it—right here and now—on you!”

  Dr. Knopf stared at him. “You’re serious about this?”

  “I am,” Wentworth assured him. “I’m going to make you do something you don’t want to do; something that you will fight against doing with all your strength.”

  The neurologist threw back his head and laughed. “Try making me stand on my head.”

  “That would be a silly stunt and prove nothing. I’m going to compel you to disclose the most disgraceful episode in your life; the one that no doubt you have carefully kept in the most secret chambers of your mind.”

  Dr. Knopf was amused, settled himself comfortably.

  “Go ahead,” he invited.

  “Tell me all about it,” Wentworth said in a quite casual voice.

  The neurologist jerked his head, as if surprised. His thin, etched face took on set rigidity, his eyes stared blankly. The perspiration beaded on his forehead. A tremendous inner struggle was taking place.

  “You are right,” he said mechanically. “I thought my secret would die with me. It happened a long time ago, when I was much younger. I was an interne then; she was a nurse. I—”

  “That’s enough,” Wentworth broke in sharply. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  Dr. Knopf swayed slightly, shook himself as if to break a spell. He sprang to his feet with a hoarse cry. “I said—”

  “Nothing,” Wentworth assured him. “I stopped you in time.”

  The neurologist sank back, trembling violently. He wiped his forehead. There was fear in his eyes.

  “What are you—devil, or man?”

  “I told you.”

  “Something pulled at me, probed with inexorable pincers, forcing obedience in spite of all my struggles. I knew it was a test, yet I could not help myself.”

  “The others have that same power; I am convinced of it.”

  “It is a miracle,” the doctor said, “yet there must be some rational explanation. We are living in the twentieth century.”

  “The explanation may be worse than the effect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Wentworth told him of his queer vision of the night of October 25th, the drugged consciousness, the ache at the back of his head.

  “He was no vision,” he concluded. “I am certain of that now. He did something to my brain, to the brains of others—God knows how many. Nor was he of this world. There was an air of remoteness, of detached amusement about him, as though he were a superscientist regarding me as an experimental guinea pig.”

  “Hmmm!” said Dr. Knopf indistinctly. He was beyond skepticism now. “A being from another world, a scientist, a surgeon possibly. You say your head ached?”

  “Horribly. In the back.”

  The neurologist went quickly to his friend and forced him down into a chair. Expert fingers probed the skull, finding nothing. Grunting his impatience, Knopf pushed the black wavy hair apart, searching, afraid to find what he suspected.

  A low gasp escaped him, a gasp compounded of horror and scientific eagerness. He had found it—the almost invisible line of ensealment of the trepanned square of skull.

  “What is it?” Wentworth asked anxiously.

  “Unbelievable!” The little doctor literally dragged the bigger man after him. “Come to my office, at once. I must see; I must see!”

  Exactly two hours later he had seen. Wentworth had been subjected to every possible type of examination; he had been fluoroscoped, X-rayed, pushed, prodded, thumped, tested with delicate instruments attuned to every type of radiation.

  The strange transparent ball attached to the pineal body showed opaque to X-Ray and fluoroscope; every time Wentworth exercised his will, a certain galvanometer, so delicate in its operations it could catch the whispers of cosmic rays themselves, reacted with barbaric violence.

  The neurologist muttered and groaned to himself throughout the long proceeding. He bubbled and effervesced with excitement. “Wentworth,” he said earnestly, when it was finally over, “let me operate on you; remove that confounded ball. Let me find out its secret. Do you realize what it would mean? The greatest discovery of all time! The greatest—�
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  “Stop it,” Wentworth said sharply, forgetting.

  Dr. Knopf stopped in mid-flight. His will was like water.

  “There’s the answer,” Craig said more carefully. “Don’t you realize what such a discovery would mean to the world? The slightest command would require instant obedience, no matter how thoughtless, no matter how terrible. Try to envision a world like that—how long would such a world last?”

  Dr. Knopf thought reluctantly. “At least,” he implored, “we could limit the discovery to a few chosen people, of proved intelligence and high ideals. They would govern the world—bring about Utopia.”

  Wentworth shook his head decisively. “Utopia would soon prove the worst kind of hell. Our choices would not be infallible. One unscrupulous person so equipped—and there would be no end to the harm done. Look what has already happened with the others. There is only one thing to do—watch for manifestations, find out who else possesses this power; do something to negate, destroy, their influence. We cannot allow this to proceed too far. If I thought it would help, I would kill myself, but I am needed. I am the only safeguard against those others, the irresponsible wielders of power.”

  As a matter of fact there was only one other thus far unmentioned. Her name was Margaret Simmons and she was a schoolteacher, already a bit weary of the eternal sameness of the schoolroom.

  She was twenty-five and not exactly beautiful. Her nose and mouth were too generously sized for that. But there was a certain feeling in the broad, calm brow, in the masses of soft, brown hair low on the forehead, in the firm line of the chin, in the informed intelligence that permeated her features.

  Men were glad to talk to her, that is, men of a certain standard of brains and culture. But their talk was invariably of the things of the mind, and not of the heart. She was weary of that, too. She would gladly have traded all her intelligence for the beauty of form of, say, Alison La Rue.

  As yet of course she did not know of her new powers. She was singularly modest in her demands; she shrank innately from requirements on other people. Yet she had noticed, and marveled at, the sudden and implicit obedience to her lightest wish from the hitherto rather unruly children of her class.