Of course, she accepted Anthony Marshall’s string of diamonds, but she let it go at that. She had other admirers—and the gifts poured in. Not that Anthony was unduly heartbroken. He in turn for the first time tasted the delights of full and complete wallowing in every form of enjoyment. Acquaintances took to leaving everything but taxifare at home when they felt there was any chance of bumping into him, but it was useless. He made them write out checks—he always carried a supply of blanks with him—or sent them posthaste to their strong boxes and vaults.
The finest cook in the world worked for him; he had a yacht, a fleet of expensive cars, everything he laid eyes on and coveted. Only the gout remained from his former impecuniosity; that, and an increasingly sensitive stomach. These he could not will away.
Jordan’s coup was scheduled for the 20th of November. His lines were laid. The police force, twenty-five thousand strong, were so many automatons, to be galvanized into action by the sound of his voice. Throughout the city he had secret stores of arms; machine guns, rifles, ammunition, light artillery, even a few tanks. Private conversations with the officers of the forts around New York had resulted in prompt and under-cover removals.
The mayor of New York was his henchman, so was the governor. That meant the National Guard of the State. During the preparation period he made it his business to address every sort of gathering, the larger the better, American Legion posts, chambers of commerce, a football crowd at the stadium, a fight crowd in Madison Square Garden, binding them to his will.
“Damn that fellow, Wentworth!” he raged to his secretary, Hollis. Hollis was in his confidence. Jordan had to have some one he could talk to. “Not found yet?”
“No, chief. Every available detective is on the prowl for him; every man on a beat has his description. He must have left New York.”
The police commissioner paced back and forth with rapid, jerky steps, his black brows lowering.
“He didn’t leave,” he said positively. “I measured the guy pretty well when he was here. He’ll do his damnedest to throw a monkey wrench into the works. That fool, Saunders!”
“What can he do?” asked Hollis.
Jordan threw up his hands. “Do? I wish I knew. That’s what makes me worried. He’s been too quiet. He’s waiting for me; he’s got something up his sleeve.”
“We move to-morrow, don’t we?”
“Yeah,” said Jordan heavily. “It’s too soon, but Wentworth’s hurried me. I’m afraid of him. It would have been easy if he weren’t around—or dead. Taken my time, made a tour of the country, spoken to millions o’ people, seen Congress, the cabinet, the supreme court, the president. By the time I’d have been through, they’d have forgotten there was such a thing as a constitution, and made me dictator. This way, I’ve got to hurry, use force, start a revolution. Not, y’understand, that I’m afraid of a little blood—I was a captain in the War—but it’s messy.”
“I think you overestimate this bird’s importance,” Hollis told him. “There are three others as well.”
“Them!” said Jordan contemptuously. “Don’t make me laugh. I could let ’em alone, and it wouldn’t mean anything. But to-night they all get picked up. I don’t take chances. Wentworth, though, is a fellow of different caliber. He knows things.”
Jordan was worried; that was certain. And there was good reason for his alarm.
In the meantime, Craig Wentworth had not been idle. The past weeks had been filled with furious preparation. He hired a small shack in a tumble-down section of the Bronx, brought the few instruments he had salvaged from his laboratory there, added to them by discreet borrowings from Dr. Knopf, and worked savagely night and day, driving himself to the limit.
“If only Jordan takes a little longer,” he told Margaret, “we’ll be able to checkmate him. I need time.”
He had made it a regular habit to meet her after school for an hour or two, and dash right back to the Bronx, to plunge into his work until long past midnight.
Margaret was perforce happy at the daily sight of him, but she would have been very much more so if the conversation had not been wholly confined to Jordan, the menace, plans and speculations, without the slightest attempt at those tender intimacies that are so dear to a woman in love.
“What are these mysterious instruments you are working on?” she asked.
He smiled. “Read my mind and find out,” he challenged.
“I wish I could,” she answered wistfully, and changed the subject. “Aren’t you afraid of being picked up some day? The entire police force is looking for you.”
“I’ve fixed that. Only this morning a cop stopped me. ‘Say,’ says he, ‘you’re Wentworth!’ I laughed in his face. ‘I’m not,’ I said. He had his hand out to grab me. He stopped it halfway, let it drop. And I just kept on walking.”
“I wish it were all over, and we were all normal human beings again.” She sighed.
At nine o’clock that night, a squad of police broke into Doolittle’s apartment and yanked him away from his radio and evening newspaper. He was too surprised and too habitually respectful of law and order in the form of brass buttons to object. If Maria had been home, things might have been different, but she had been called over to her mother, who was a hypochondriac and was always dying.
Accordingly there was no difficulty about hauling him down to headquarters, to await disposition by Jordan. The steel door clanged on the bewildered little man with an ominous sound.
The second squad ran into trouble. They found Alison La Rue in her sybaritic penthouse. Jordan had expected some difficulty, so he had spoken to the squad for ten minutes before they went, to make sure his will would continue in effect. But he had overlooked the simplest law of his strange power.
“Come along, lady,” the lieutenant in charge said gruffly. “The commissioner wants to have a little talk with you.”
“Got a warrant?” asked Alison.
The policeman grinned. “Naw, don’t need any. Come along quietly, or your pretty face’ll get hurt.”
She wrapped her negligee closer around her and defied them. “I ain’t going.”
The five husky men paused uncertainly. The simple statement had been enough to counteract the recent impact of the commissioner’s will.
The lieutenant realized his position was ticklish. No warrant and breaking into a private apartment spelled trouble, if the woman got herself a good lawyer.
“Now listen, lady,” he pleaded.
“I won’t,” she retorted violently. “I got rights, and a lawyer. I ain’t going and you can’t make me.”
The police, all husky five of them, wilted under the overlaying influence, became obedient automatons to her will. Had she then commanded them to kill each other forthwith, they would have done so under the compulsion.
With meek rigidity they filed out, leaving her staring. Being dumb, she had not as yet quite realized what she possessed. Which was mighty lucky for the world. She actually attributed all of her success to her brilliancy as an actress and to her irresistible feminine appeal.
At headquarters, Jordan first listened incredulously to his returning cohorts, then broke into a fury of vituperation. Now that they were once more under his personal influence, they were sheepish.
“I dunno how it happened,” muttered the lieutenant, “but the moment that dame said she wouldn’t go, it just seemed as if she was right about it.”
Jordan controlled his raging temper in a hurry. He realized now the simple principle he had overlooked. He must be more careful in the future.
“I’m going with you,” he said grimly.
Alison drew herself up haughtily at this second intrusion, but this time her protests were unavailing. Her will power was diffuse, weak, as against the grim, concentrated force of the commissioner. She went, and the cell door banged on her, too.
Anthony Marshall was nabbed at the home of one of his friends and, before he could protest, was gagged and blindfolded. J
ordan was taking no chances on Tony’s awareness of the situation.
“That’ll hold them,” the commissioner remarked with an air of satisfaction to Hollis as he personally locked the three great cell doors and pocketed the keys. “Put Moran in charge—he’s stone-deaf and nearsighted. They won’t be able to do a thing with him. He can feed them through the bars.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
Jordan shrugged. “Ought to kill ’em off, I suppose. I will, if they make too much trouble. When things get set, though, I’ll call in a good surgeon, to operate. Wentworth said something about it.”
“And Wentworth?”
The commissioner’s face darkened. “When I get hold of him—” he said slowly, and said no more. It was not necessary.
All through the night the city was a hive of secret preparations. Ordinary good citizens went to bed unknowing what momentous changes were being prepared for their destinies, the destinies of the nation, the whole world in fact. Even Wentworth did not know. He was immersed in perfecting his apparatus. He did not dream that Jordan would act in such extreme haste.
The 20th of November dawned cold and clear. Early risers, ready to resume the day’s monotonous round of duties, paused on front doorsteps and gasped.
The streets of New York were flowing rivers of grim, armed men. Policemen, National Guards, firemen, all with bright-blue arm bands, fully equipped with bayoneted rifles, ammunition belts; machine-gun squads, motorized artillery, light tanks, roared and thundered through the narrow thoroughfares on their way to the appointed rendezvous.
Every telephone exchange, cable office, railroad station, air field, radio station, every road, was policed, with strict orders to forbid all outgoing traffic, all outgoing messages. Jordan was taking no chances on the news of his mobilization getting abroad.
Wentworth was one of the early risers. He stepped unwitting down the brownstone stoop of his boarding house and was immediately shoved back by a raucous sergeant of police.
“Get back in and stay in!” the red-faced cop yelled. “No one allowed out to-day.”
The street was alive with the noise of marching men, the rumble of artillery, converging on Central Park.
Wentworth was aghast. He experienced a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. Blind fool that he was! Jordan had acted and caught him napping, unready. His apparatus was not yet complete. Jordan would strike, and win, before he had a chance to move.
“Get back, I told you!” The sergeant snatched out a revolver, leveled it at him threateningly.
Wentworth looked at the blustering policeman. The blue arm band shone in the sun, so did the blued steel of the revolver.
“You will let me pass,” he said coldly. “I am your superior; my will is your will.”
The sergeant moved back a step, pocketed his gun, turned rigid.
“Yes, sir,” he said tonelessly. “What are your commands?”
“Go to your home, and stay there until I give you further orders.”
“As you say, sir.”
The man saluted, and plunged into the heaving stream of men and materials, shouldering his way violently against the moving current.
It had worked. That meant the last imposing of will was the most effective. A wild hope darted through him. Suppose he were to appear boldly before the assembled troops, bind them to his loyalty rather than to Jordan’s. A moment’s reflection disabused him, however.
There he would necessarily run into Jordan. It would be a battle of conflicting wills, and he knew Jordan’s was as determined as his. And Jordan’s influence had sunk in by repeated commands. He, Wentworth, would be killed before he had a chance to make the men even waver.
The outlook was dark. Yet the first moment of despair soon passed. He must find Margaret, get hold of Dr. Knopf. Together they might find a way.
First, Margaret. He plunged into the seething horde of men, stopped each angry growl, each threatening move his way, by cold, curt commands. He went further. He ordered home those whose eye he could catch, and little groups of police dissociated themselves from the press, moved with rigid steps through their former comrades. A thin trickling of course that could have no appreciable effect on Jordan’s scheme.
He found Margaret awake and pale. He did not interpret the glad little cry she gave at the sight of him, but hustled her out with hardly a word of explanation. Next he picked up Dr. Knopf.
Outside, Wentworth calmly commandeered an official car, told the uniformed chauffeur to step out, and got behind the wheel.
With the siren wide open, the heavy car roared through the crowded streets, heading for the Bronx. Men in uniform jumped for their lives, shouted angrily. Shots whizzed by, but their speed, and the wild confusion of their flight, saved them from harm. Once a battery of tanks blocked their way, but Wentworth leaned far out from his driver’s seat, Margaret leaned out to the right, and shouted simultaneously:
“Pull aside; give us room to pass.”
The angry commander promptly obeyed; the tanks clambered up the curb onto the sidewalk, and the car whizzed through. In a little while they were free from the menace of Jordan’s henchmen.
Hurry! Hurry! The thought hammered with insane repetition in Wentworth’s brain. He must complete his apparatus, get it to the field of operations, before it was too late. And the sinking feeling grew on him again. It was too late!
They pulled up with a screaming of tortured brakes in front of the little shack that housed his equipment. Wentworth was out of the car before the wheels stopped rolling.
Inside, not stopping to doff his coat, he plunged furiously into work, simultaneously issuing staccato commands to Knopf and Margaret. They brought him tools, spliced wires with eager, untrained fingers, noted meter readings, did everything they could to help.
As they worked, Wentworth explained what the apparatus was, what he intended to do with it. Several times he was puzzled, asked Dr. Knopf for advice.
They raced against time, against the inevitable march of events. And still the machine was incomplete; vital parts, bits of vital theory even, as yet missing.
“We can’t stop the beginning of this awful revolution.” Wentworth groaned, “but with uninterrupted work all day and to-night, maybe we’ll get finished in time to call a halt before it gets out of hand.”
Uninterrupted work, a bare day and a night, to save the world from a greater menace than Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, Timur the Lame, or Napoleon had ever been. A bare day and a night! Modest demand!
A belated policeman, on his way to a telephone exchange he should have contacted an hour before, saw the official car stop at the seemingly deserted one-story wooden structure, saw the two men and the girl get out. They did not see him, and thus were unable to influence his decisions. He recognized Wentworth at once from the broadcast description.
He did not stop. His orders were definite, inviolable, to proceed to the exchange. He had overslept. But immediately on arrival, he made connection with headquarters.
“I want to speak with the chief,” he said.
“Can’t,” said headquarters switchboard. “He’s left for the front.”
“I must talk to him,” he insisted.
“Don’t be a sap. I told you—”
The policeman had an inspiration. “O. K. Hollis there?”
“Yes.”
“Fine! Put him on.”
Hollis was impatient. “What in hell d’you want? I’m late for the chief now.”
“Listen, Mr. Hollis,” the officer’s voice was ingratiating. “When he hears the news, he won’t mind your being late. An’ put in a good word for me, too.”
“Spill it without so much chatter.”
“I found Wentworth’s hideout.”
“Wha-a-at?”
“I knew you’d be surprised,” said the policeman happily. “Here’s the dope—”
VI.
The mall in Central Park was in full p
anoply of war. Fifty thousand men surged in serried rows over the vast expanse. Twenty-five thousand police, ten thousand firemen, and fifteen thousand National Guards, wearing the blue band, presenting government rifles to the glistening sunlight.
Jordan stood on the raised platform, gratified. At his side were the mayor and governor, wan images of their former selves. His will was their will.
He raised his hand for silence. A hush, deeper than that of death, fell on the multitude. He spoke, projecting his commands through a loud-speaker system, so that the farthest trooper could hear and be impregnated with his will.
“Bluebands!” he orated. “I am your leader and you are my men.”
The troops roared their approval.
“The world has long waited for us!” Jordan shouted. “Fools and idiots have ruled it long enough. It is time for them to go. What this country needs, what the world needs, is a strong man, a dictator, who is ruthless and hard, and can impose his will. I am that man; I, Alfred Jordan.”
“Jordan, Jordan!” they yelled in unison, not knowing why, knowing only that they must.
“The President of the United States, Congress, all of them must go. They are weaklings. You, with myself at your head, will let nothing stand in our way. If there is opposition, if the enemy persuade deluded fools to bar your path, you will brush them aside; you will kill.
“We march on Washington at once. Company commanders, order your men to fall in. Take charge. Remember, my will in all things is your will. Repeat that.”
The terrible phrase parroted back in a thunder of sound. Like an insidious opiate it penetrated the most secret cells of the assemblage, making them mere tools fashioned to the hand of Jordan. He himself felt the powerful outpouring of radiant energy from his brain. It exalted him, made him feel like a god.
Battalion after battalion swung around in military precision, passed the speaker’s stand, saluted, and marched west through the park, toward Pennsylvania Station, on to destiny.
Jordan waited. When the last battalion was on the move, he would catch up in the armored car appropriated to his use.
Four Astounding Novellas Page 14
