Rats in the Belfry

by Bryce Walton

here?" I called over myshoulder.

  Stoddard joined me, snapping on a flashlight, spraying the beam aroundthe attic rafters. "No," he said. "Of course not."

  I was opening my mouth to answer, when I suddenly became aware that thenoises were now definitely louder. Noises faint, but not blurred anylonger. Noises which weren't really noises, but were actually voices!

  I grabbed Stoddard by the arm.

  "Listen!" I ordered.

  We stood there silently for perhaps half a minute. Yes, there wasn't anyquestion about it now. I knew that the faint sounds were those of humanvoices.

  "Good heavens!" Stoddard exclaimed.

  "Rats, eh?" I said sarcastically.

  "But, but--" Stoddard began. He was obviously bewildered.

  "There's a sort of central pipe and wiring maze up here," I told him,"due to the plans we were forced to follow in building this house ofyours. Those faint voices are carried through the pipes and wires forsome reason of sound vibration, and hurled up here. Just tell me whereyou keep your radio, and we'll solve your problem."

  Stoddard looked at me a minute.

  "But we don't own a radio," he said quietly.

  * * * * *

  I was suddenly very much deflated.

  "Are you sure?" I demanded.

  "Don't be silly," Stoddard told me.

  I stood there scratching my head and feeling foolish. Then I got anotheridea.

  "Have you been up in that, ah, ornamental belfry since you moved in?" Iasked.

  "Of course not," Stoddard said. "It's to look at. Not to peek out of."

  "I have a hunch the sounds might be even more audible up there," I said.

  "Why?"

  I scratched my head. "Just a hunch."

  "Well it's a dammed fool one," Stoddard said. He turned around andstarted out of the attic. I followed behind him.

  "You have to admit you haven't rats," I said.

  Stoddard muttered something I couldn't catch. When we got down to thefirst floor again, Mrs. Stoddard was waiting expectantly for ourarrival.

  "Did you discover where the rats are?" she demanded.

  Stoddard shot me a glance. "They aren't rats," he said with somereluctance. "The noises, we'd swear, are faint voices and sounds ofhuman beings moving around. Were you talking to yourself while we wereupstairs, Laura?"

  Mrs. Stoddard gave her husband a surprised look. "Who was there to talkwith, George?" she asked.

  I had had about enough of this. I was damned tired of trotting aroundthe weirdly laid out floors of the Stoddard home trying to track downrats which weren't rats but voices.

  "If there are inexplicable echoes in this building," I said, "it is dueto the construction. And don't forget, you wanted it this way. Now thatI have proved to your satisfaction that you don't have rats, I might aswell go. Good day."

  I got my hat, and neither Stoddard nor his wife had much to say as theysaw me to the door. Their accusing attitudes had vanished, however, andthey both seemed even a trifle sheepish.

  It was two o'clock when I left them. I'd killed better than an hour anda half prowling around the place, and another half hour driving out. Iwas damned disgusted by the time I got back to my office.

  You can imagine my state of mind, consequently, some twenty-five minutesafter I'd been back in my office, when I answered the telephone to hearStoddard's voice coming over it.

  "Mr. Kermit," he babbled excitedly, "this is George B. Stoddard again,Mr. Kermit!"

  "What've you got now?" I demanded. "And don't tell me termites!"

  "Mr. Kermit," Stoddard gasped, "you have to come back right away, Mr.Kermit!"

  "I will like hell," I told him flatly, hanging up.

  The telephone rang again in another half minute. It was Stoddard again.

  "Mr. Kermit, pleeeease listen to me! I beg of you, come out here atonce. It's terribly important!"

  I didn't say a word this time. I just hung right up.

  In another half minute the telephone was jangling again. I was purplewhen I picked it up this time.

  "Listen," I bellowed. "I don't care what noises you're hearing now--"

  Stoddard cut in desperately, shouting at the top of his lungs to do so.

  "I'm not only hearing the noises, Kermit," he yelled, "I'm _seeing_ thepeople who cause them!"

  * * * * *

  This caught me off balance.

  "Huh?" I gulped.

  "The belfry," he yelled, "I went up in the belfry, and you can see thepeople who's voices we heard!" There was a pause, while he found breath,then he shouted, "You have to come over. You're the only one I can thinkof to show this to!"

  Stoddard was an eccentric, but only so far as his tastes in architecturewere concerned. I realized this, as I sat there gaping foolishly at thestill vibrating telephone in my hand.

  "Okay," I said, for no earthly reason that I could think of, "okay, hangon. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

  Mrs. Stoddard met me at the door this time. She was worried, almostfrightened, and very bewildered.

  "George is upstairs, Mr. Kermit. He won't let me come up there. He toldme to send you up the minute you arrived. He's up in the attic."

  "What on earth," I began.

  "I don't know," his wife said. "I was down in the basement drying someclothes, when I heard this terrible yelling from George. Then he wascalling you on the telephone. I don't know what it's all about."

  I raced up to the attic in nothing flat, almost knocking my teeth out onthe bottom step of the attic stairs.

  Then I stumbled into the darkness of the attic, and saw Stoddard'sflashlight bobbing around in a corner.

  "Kermit?"

  It was Stoddard's voice.

  "Yes," I answered. "What in the hell is up? It had better be goo--."

  "Hurry," Stoddard said. "Over here, quickly!"

  I stumbled across the board spacings until I was standing besideStoddard and peering up at what the beam of his flashlight revealed onthe ceiling--a ragged, open hole, which he'd made by tearing severalcoatings of insulation from the spot.

  For a minute, I couldn't make out anything in that flash beam glare.Stoddard had hold of my arm, and was saying one word over and over,urgently.

  "Look. Look. Look!"

  Then my eyes got adjusted to the light change, and I was aware that Iwas gazing up into the interior of the crazy belfry atop the monstroushouse. Gazing up into the interior, while voices, quite loud and clearlydistinguishable, were talking in a language which I didn't recognizeimmediately. As far as my vision was concerned, I might as well havebeen looking at a sort of grayish vaporish screen of some sort, that wasall I saw.

  "Shhhh!" Stoddard hissed now. "Don't say a word. Just listen to them!"

  I held my breath, although it wasn't necessary. As I said, the voicescoming down from that belfry were audible enough to have been a scantten or twelve feet away. But I held my breath anyway, meanwhilestraining my eyes to pierce that gray screen of vapor on which the lightwas focused.

  And then I got it. The voices were talking in German, two of them, bothharsh, masculine.

  "What in the hell," I began. "Is there a short wave set up there or--"

  Stoddard cut me off. "Can't you see it yet?" he hissed.

  * * * * *

  The voices went on talking, while I strained my eyes even more in aneffort to pierce that gray fog covering the rent in the ceiling. Andthen I saw. Saw at first, as if through a thin gray screen of gauze.

  I was looking up into a room of some sort. A big room. An incredibly bigroom. A room so big that two dozen belfry rooms would have fit into it!

  And then it got even clearer. There was a desk at the end of the room. Atremendously ornate desk. A desk behind which was sitting a small, grayuniformed, moustached man.

  There was another uniformed person of porcine girth standing beside thatdesk and pointing to a map on the wall in front of him. He was jabberingex
citedly to the little man at the desk, and he wore a uniform that wasso plushily gaudy it was almost ridiculous.

  The two kept chattering back and forth to each other in German,obviously talking about the map at which the fat, plush-clad one waspointing.

  I turned incredulously to Stoddard.

  "Wh-wh-what in the hell goes?" I demanded.

  Stoddard seemed suddenly vastly relieved. "So you see it and hear it,too!" he exclaimed. "Thank God for that! I thought I'd lost my mind!"

  I grabbed hard on his arm. "But listen," I began.

  "Listen, nothing," he hissed. "We _both_ can't be crazy. Those are thevoices we kept hearing before. And those two people are the talkers.Those two German (five words censored) louses. Hitler and Goering!"

  There, he'd said it. I hadn't dared to. It sounded too mad, too wildly,babblingly insane to utter. But now I looked back through that thin graycheesecloth of fog, back into the room.

  The two occupants couldn't be anyone other than Hitler and Goering. AndI was suddenly aware that the map Goering pointed to so frequently was amap of Austria.

  "But what," I started again.

  Stoddard looked me in the eye. "I can understand a little German," hesaid. "They're talking about an invasion of Austria, and if you willlook hard at the corner of that map, you'll see a date marked--1938!"

  I did look hard, and of course I saw that date. I turned back toStoddard.

  "We're both crazy," I said a little wildly, "we're both stark, ravingnuts. Let's get out of here."

  "We are looking back almost five years into the past," Stoddard hissed."We are looking back five years into Germany, into a room in whichHitler and Goering are talking over an approaching invasion of a countrycalled Austria. I might have believed I was crazy when I first foundthis alone, but not now!"

  Maybe we were both crazy. Maybe he was wrong. But then and there Ibelieved him, and I knew that somehow, in some wild, impossible fashion,that belfry on Stoddard's asinine house had become a door leadingthrough space and time, back five years into Germany, into the same roomwhere Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering planned the conquest of Austria!

  Stoddard was taking something out of his pocket.

  "Now that you're here I can try it," he said. "I didn't dare do sobefore, since I felt I couldn't trust my own mind alone in the thing."

  I looked at what he held in his hands. A stone, tied to a long piece ofstring.

  "What's that for?" I demanded.

  "I want to see if that veil, that gray fog door, can be penetrated," hehissed.

  * * * * *

  Stoddard was swinging the stone on a string in a sharp arc now. Andsuddenly he released it, sending it sailing through the grayish aperturein the ceiling, straight into the belfry, or rather, the big room.

  I saw and heard the stone on the string hit the marble floor of thatroom. Then, just as sharply, Stoddard jerked it back, yanking it intothe attic again.

  The result in the room beyond the fog sheet was instantaneous. Goeringwheeled from the map on the wall, glaring wildly around the room. Apistol was in his hand.

  Hitler had half risen behind that ornate desk, and was searching thevast, otherwise unoccupied room wildly with his eyes.

  Of course neither saw anything. Stoddard, breathing excitedly at myside, had pulled the stone back into our section of time and space. Buthis eyes were gleaming.

  "It can be done," he whispered fiercely. "It can be crossed!"

  "But what on--" I started. He cut me off with a wave of his hand,pointing back to the gray screen covering the hole in the ceiling.

  Goering had put the pistol back in the holster at his side, and wasgrinning sheepishly at der Fuehrer, who was resuming his seat behind thedesk in confused and angry embarrassment.

  The voices picked up again.

  "They're saying how silly, to be startled by a sound," Stoddard hissedin my ear.

  Then he grabbed my arm. "But come, we can't wait any longer. Somethinghas to be done immediately."

  He was pulling me away from the rent in the ceiling, away from the doorthat had joined our time and space to the time and space of a world andscene five years ago.

  As we emerged from the attic and started blinkingly down the steps,Stoddard almost ran ahead of me.

  "We must hurry," he said again and again.

  "To where?" I demanded bewilderedly. "Hadn't we better do somethingabout th--"

  "Exactly," Stoddard panted. "We're really going to do something aboutthat phenomenon in the belfry. We're going to the first place in twowhere we can buy two rifles, quick!"

  "Rifles?" I gasped, still not getting it.

  "For that little moustached swine up there," Stoddard said, pointingtoward the attic. "If a stone can cross that gray barrier, so canbullets. We are both going to draw bead on Adolf Hitler in the year of1938, and thus avert this hell he's spread since then. With two of usfiring, we can't miss."

  And then, of course, I got it. It was incredible, impossible. But thatgray screen covering the rent in the attic ceiling upstairs wasn'timpossible. I'd seen it. Neither was the room behind it, the room wherethe belfry was supposed to be, but where Adolf Hitler's inner sanctumwas instead. I'd seen that, too. So was it impossible that we'd be ableto eliminate the chief cause of the world's trouble by shootingaccurately back across time and space?

  At that moment I didn't think so!

  Our mad clattering dash down the attic steps, and then down to the firstfloor brought Mrs. Stoddard up from the basement. She lookedfrightenedly from her husband to me, then back to him again.

  "What's wrong?" she quavered.

  "Nothing," Stoddard said, pushing her gently but quickly aside as wedashed for the door.

  "But, George!" Mrs. Stoddard shrilled behind us. We heard her footstepshurrying toward the door, even as we were out of it.

  "My car," I yelled. "It's right in front. I know the closest place wherewe can get the guns!"

  * * * * *

  Stoddard and I piled into the car like a pair of high school kids whenthe last bell rings. Then I was gunning the motor, while out of thecorner of my eye I could see Stoddard's wife running down the frontsteps shouting shrilly after us.

  We jumped from the curb like a plane from a catapult, doing fifty by myquick shift to second gear. Then we were tearing the quiet streets ofMayfair's second subdivision apart with the noise of a blasting horn anda snarling motor.

  It was ten minutes later when I screeched to a stop in front of thesports and gun store I'd remembered existed in Mayfair's firstsubdivision. The clerk was amazed at the wild speed with which we racedin, grabbed the guns, threw the money on the counter, and dashed out.

  We must have looked like something out of a gangster movie as we racedback to Stoddard's place.

  I was doing the driving, and Stoddard had clambered in beside me, bothrifles, and several cartridge packages in his hands. He was rocking backand forth in mad impatience, as if by rocking he could increase ourspeed. The expression on his face was positively bloodthirsty.

  And then we heard the sirens behind us. Shrill, coming up like cometwails in spite of our own speed.

  "Oh, God!" Stoddard groaned. "Police!"

  I squinted up into my rear vision mirror. We were less than two blocksfrom the Stoddard house, now, and the thought of being overhauled bypolice at the juncture was sickening, unbearable even to contemplate.

  And then I saw the reason for the sirens. Saw them in the rear visionmirror. Two fire engines, one a hook and ladder outfit, the other a hosetruck!

  "It's all right," I yelped. "It's only two fire trucks!"

  "Thank God!" Stoddard gasped.

  We were a block from his place now, with only one corner left to turnbefore we'd see the mad architectural monstrosity he called him home;before we'd see the crazy belfry which held the salvation of the worldin its screwballish, queer-angled lines.

  And then the fire trucks and the sirens were nearer and lo
uder, lessthan a block behind us. At that instant we turned the corner and cameinto full view of the Stoddard place.

  It was a mass of flames, utterly, roaringly ablaze!

  It was tragedy! The house was in flames; the rats wouldescape....]

  I almost drove us off the street and into a tree. And by the time I'dgotten a grip on myself, we were just a few houses away from the blazinginferno of Stoddard's crazy quilt dwelling.

  I stopped by the curb, and clambered out of the car onto knees whichwould scarcely support me. My stomach was turning over and over in anapparently endless series of nauseating somersaults.

  Stoddard, white-faced, frozen, stood there beside me, clutching the gunsand the cartridge boxes foolishly in his hands.

  Then someone was running up to us. Running and crying sobbingly,breathlessly. It was Stoddard's wife.

  The fire trucks screeched to a stop before the blazing building at thatinstant, and her first words were drowned in the noise they made.

  "... just drying out some clothes, George," she sobbed. "Just dryingthem out and turned on the furnace to help dry them. You left like that,and I got frightened. I ran to a neighbor's. The explosion and firestarted not five minutes later."

  Sickly, I thought of