Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  When he spoke again his voice came weakly. “It isn’t the breeding, but the training . . . they only take the hardest, toughest men they can find for reporters, mal-treat ’em, take away their hearts and graft on ’em a nose that smells out news ‘scoops’

  Miss Lois’ (heavenly name) eyes opened wide, then I saw that she had a good sense of humour for she laughed.

  “You are . . . what you say . . . kidding me again. Howard Wormley. You talk too much. Now both of you go to sleep while I go to tell Doctor Morris that Jim Kennedy has gained consciousness.”

  As she was speaking she put her hand on my forehead and then professionally took my pulse, thrust a thermometer into my mouth and then tucked the covers around my neck after reading it and writing the answer on her charts. She then tip-toed softly over to D’Arcy’s side.

  Wormley and I watched breathlessly as she bent over him. She put her fingers to his pulse, but as quickly took it away, then with a white face she turned to us. “He . . . oh dear . . . I believe he is dead!” and she turned and raced from the ward.

  In a minute she was back followed by a white coated doctor. He too bent over the still form, and we saw him draw the sheets over the face. Miss Lois brushed a tear from her eye. The Doctor now turned to me.

  Doctor Morris was rotund, pink-cheeked and bald. The sight of him carried me back to New York. He might have been merely a physician paying his daily call at his clinic. He had no wings or signs of any. Surely he did not belong in the Brazilian jungles.

  Later I learned that he was from New York, that he had come to Mentor of his own accord, preferring his work here among the flying people to his fashionable clientele on Park Avenue. Here he was head of the medical corps and he loved the winged people more than he could ever have loved his millionaire clients.

  “Well,” he said quietly, “we lost one, but we managed to save two!” and he smiled. “I surely am delighted to see you looking so good, young man. You almost went under. But you’ll be as good as a new babe in a few days. No bones broken, but you were pretty well cut up around your head and shoulders. Had a slight concussion of the brain, too. Lost lots of blood. Now Wormley here broke a leg and got his face so cut up I am afraid his own mother won’t be able to recognize him again.”

  He noted the readings of my chart and then bade us both to take a nap. With a friendly nod and a “Hope you like Mentor,” he was gone with Miss Lois trailing behind.

  Conjectures

  NEITHER Wormley or I spoke, both of us thinking of our dead comrade in the other bed. Then I must have fallen off to sleep, for it was dark in the room when I was awakened by a nurse (not Miss Lois) bringing me some broth. The room was lighted with electricity, and I saw that D’Arcy’s body had already been removed. After eating I fell asleep again.

  I did not awaken until morning and I found Wormley already breakfasting and waiting for me to wake up. I was given some fruit juices by a nurse who, unlike Miss Lois, had poor little undeveloped wings on her shoulders. However, she was cheery and gay as she made us ready for the day. When she left us I turned to Wormley.

  “Now, tell me something,” I said, “about this place. What have you discovered about it anyway?”

  “Feeling chipper, eh? Well, you’ll be out and doing, I suppose, in a short while and I’ve got about a month or so before I can get around on this game leg of mine.”

  “Well, tell me what kind of a machine they used to pull us down with?”

  “Sorry, but I can’t say. No one seems anxious to talk about it at all. But after thinking it over it seemed to me that what we were caught in was a great man-made tornado.”

  I looked at him incredulously. “Man-made tornado.”

  “Um-hum,” he nodded. “Just that. I’ve been thru one before and I know the signs. What else could explain the great force that pulled us, the sudden darkness, the chill and the feeling of the earth swinging around.”

  I shook my head sadly. “I don’t see.”

  Wormley looked at me tolerantly. “Alright, here goes,” he said. “I’ll explain. A tornado, you see is caused by a sudden change, or movement of air. Let a cold body of air sweep over a heated place and it will quickly descend and the heated air will rise. That creates a spiral movement of the air. The cold air descending naturally causes a sudden chill, while the great flurry of dust in the air ionized by electrical disturbances obscures the sun and causes darkness.”

  I was beginning to see. “But,” I objected, “I always thought that a tornado touched only a small area.”

  “So it does,” Wormley agreed, “That’s why this one must be man made. What I think they did was to electrically ionize the dust of the air probably even throwing great quantities of dust into the air. And then they must use some gigantic machine to suck in the air to create the cyclonic movement in the higher regions.”

  I lay back pondering. So these people had command of a great knowledge of science . . .

  “Well what do you think now,” Wormley asked.

  “Well, whatever it was, it certainly did the trick.”

  “Right,” Wormley agreed. “It certainly is a wow and I’d like to have the chance to study it. Mechanics is my meat!”

  “Well, all I’m after is the meat of the story. Come across now and tell me all that you’ve learned about this place. I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible and report this to the ‘home folks’ ”.

  “Boy, from the looks of this joint you’re never going to see no home folks . . . take that from me.”

  I laughed. Show me the reporter who did not get home to report!

  “You can laugh, but it’s no laughing matter. I know that girl who signalled us got hers . . . and the Patriarch won’t stand for any foolishness!”

  “Who’s the Patriarch?” I demanded.

  “You’ll know soon enough, but I guess I better enlighten you before you make any breaks for liberty! Well, in the first place you are now in the hospital of City Number One of the nation of Mentor as I have already told you. And City Number One is built entirely underground! No wonder none of us ever found it.

  “It must have taken quite a bit of engineering too, with those gigantic trees overhead, most of them several hundred feet high. Everything here appears to be under a communistic sort of regime. Everyone works for a common cause—food, clothing and work is doled out by the city administration plan. Children are raised by the state, lives are directed by the bell. Everyone does his work on schedule. And over it all is this Patriarch.

  “Haven’t seen him yet, but I understand that he’s a dictatorial boy, has ’em all under his thumb and they love it. He’s a lady killer, too. Has a harem of his very own. His family has held the Patriarchship since the beginning of the race, so he’s naturally the big billy-goat. I am led to believe that he will be making a tour of inspection in a few days.”

  “Have you seen any of the kidnapped girls?”

  “No, not yet, though I understand a few of ’em are working here in the hospital. Doctor Morris says that most of the captives are happy here, too. It seems as if they enjoy the wholesome life! no ‘sasiety’ to do, no continual run of social duties, no match-making mamas, no fighting to hold their places before the world. Here they are given what work they wish to do and the hours are easy; they can choose their own mates and live a simple quiet life.”

  “Yeh,” I observed, “that’s all right for a change, but how does a steady diet of it go? And what about their families back home worrying about them?”

  Wormley shrugged his shoulders. “No need to get mad at me. I’m telling you facts.”

  “Well, then tell me the history of this glorious nation of Mentor. And what’s the Mentor for?”

  “That’s part of the story. It appears as if the whole thing was started back in the sixteenth century, on the heels of Columbus by a chap by the name of Mentor! All this talk about evolution from birds is bunk. Yeh, man-made evolution. That’s what it is.”

  I had to break into a laugh at thi
s junction. “You certainly do ramble around your story. Now come across with it. You know I am anxious to learn what it’s all about.”

  “Well, who’s telling the story, anyway, you oaf? Oh . . . all right I’ll give it to you straight then. Here goes, and please remember that I never took up story writing.”

  “Aw, go on, go on.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Wormley’s Tale

  BEFORE starting the tale, however, Wormley first plumped up his pillows and settled himself comfortably. Then he took a sip of water from the glass standing on the table between our beds.

  “It is told,” he began, “that there once lived a fellow by the name of Howard Mentor, English and Scotch stock, all scientists . . . of sorts, astrologists, alchemists, leeches or whatever they called ’em back in those days. Also some philosophers and prophets as well as some evolutionists in the bunch, too. And it seems that from father to son had come an ambition to put wings onto man long before they had the idea that machinery could be made to fly, or did they know anything about machinery in those days? I guess I’m a bit hazy about our ancestors at that.

  “Well, anyway after generations of experiments it was this Howard Mentor who managed to grow wings on the back of a rabbit or maybe it was a white rat. Howard was feeling pretty proud about that I guess so what does he decide to do but to try some experiments on his own son!

  “His idea seemed to be in taking certain glands from the throats of living birds and replanting them in his victims. He also injected some sort of solution into the body. Of course in those days they did not know that the blood circulated so it was a rather hit or miss proposition, and Doctor Morris seems to believe that little Howard was far ahead of his times.

  “It had taken many generations to grow wings on the rabbit, but Grandfather Howard was not discouraged believing rather in posterity and aimed to do as much as he could in his life time. He began right there to attempt to improve the human species by performing the same operation on his own offspring. He forced his wife to take the injections, submit to the operation, and also to swallow another concoction that he brewed himself made from some part of the bird.

  “In the next ten years he had produced a pretty fair nucleus for his future generations, his wife giving birth to nine children of both sexes. When she, poor woman, died, he managed to take upon himself another wife and by using the same methods brought a half a dozen more children into the world inoculated with the virus that was eventually to bring about his heart’s desire.

  “Luckily Mentor had much of the world’s goods to his credit. He had a vast estate somewhere in the back-skirts of Scotland so there were no prying eyes to watch and condemn him. His next task was to obtain wives for his growing sons and husbands for his daughters. His oldest son was fifteen when he found a wife for him. She submitted docilely to the old man’s administrations and within a year their baby was born. Mentor was not disappointed because it was born like all other babies. He knew how to bide his time.

  “In the meantime he had been teaching his sons and daughters his science and nurtured in each one of them the desire to see men and women on wing. Perhaps a few went astray from the fold, but there is no record of such in the annals of Mentorian history. Perhaps some of his son’s wives rebelled, but our Lord Mentor knew how to quell that. Perhaps the servants rebelled and grumbled at the strange mixture the master of the house demanded be cooked with all foods so that all dishes tasted very much alike. But that was the day of serfs and feudalism, and servants were not problems then.

  “The most difficult task that Father Mentor had to do was to marry off his daughters. Young lordlings, counts and the like, did not care for the idea of leaving their own paternal estates to live in the already crowded castle isolated from their kind. One or two whose fortunes were not so secure came attracted by the beauty of Mentor’s daughters. A third son of an Earl who had been destined for the church married another of the beauties, but there the supply ended. So Mentor was forced to go down into the cities and buy up youths who had been incarcerated in the debtor’s prisons in order to marry off his remaining daughters. It must have been a great pleasure to the old boy when he married the last of the brood off!

  “One can wonder what discords must have arisen in the paternal home with more than a dozen different families under the same roof, for now the children were being born so rapidly that it was almost too much to keep count. Mentor was present at each birth anxiously expectant as to what may be brought forth. He all but wept when his youngest daughter brought into the world a little son that had for arms what looked very much like the wings of a fledgling bird.

  “There was a soft down on the strange appendages and it looked as if the little fellow would one day be able to fly! Fly he might, but his arms had been sacrificed. The little mother must have wept over her maimed darling and Mentor surely wasn’t happy over it, but at the same time he knew that the first rung of the ladder had been climbed. They could only hope that this was an accident. The scientist again went into his laboratories and brought forth another mess that was added to the diet of his family.

  “The new baby became the pet of the family and they all tried to keep him from knowing of his loss. At four years old they tried to teach him to fly, but the wings had not matured and were weak sticks. They did act as a sort of support when the little fellow took jumps from the top of a flight of steps and landed at the foot nicely balanced with his feathered arms outspread. The down of the wings had grown into small feathers, unevenly distributed the length of the wing, but they had none of the beauty of the present-day wings of the people of Mentor.”

  Off To Mentor

  “AND so,” went on Wormley after sipping some more water, “All went well until the third generations began to arrive. For his grandchildren Mentor had taken the easiest course and married cousin to cousin, hoping in this way to hasten his evolutionary trick.

  “His cry of joy was heard throughout the castle and into the valley below when the first great-grand child came into the world with odd protuberances on his little shoulders. They were no more than little lumps with the least suggestion of down upon them, but they were the first link of the long chain. It mattered not to the grandfather that the mother of the babe died in giving it birth, for that night was one of celebration. There were no invited guests to the feast; Mentor had no desire to make the world aware of the nature of his experiments.

  “More children were born, some had the humps on their shoulders, some did not; but two were born with more definite suggestions of the sought-for wings. Then the son of the arm-less grandchild was born, and lo, he had wings, true wings almost as long as his body and arms as well!

  “Mentor might have been able to rear his family in Scotland and there the race might have grown as well as in the jungles of South America had not word slipped out to the authorities in Edinburgh. Had a servant told or had one of Mentor’s offspring slipped away and tattled? The truth can’t be learned, but it was enough that a small army of soldiers of the king came to the stronghold and demanded in the name of God, the Pope and the King as to what sacrilege had been perpetrated here in this fastness.

  “Mentor had in some way been forewarned and the monstrosities had been secreted away so that the officers retreated somewhat disgruntled and empty-handed. Still Mentor wisely foresaw that this was the beginning of the end. Word of the discovery of new land to the westward had reached Scotland and the stalwart old gentleman who was not to be thwarted decided to leave the narrow confines of his native country.

  “So it happened that the Mentor clan embarked for the new world, and the old world was left in ignorance. Mentor first went to the nearest seaport and there with his money bought men and women who were willing to go to the new country across the sea. He chartered a ship, provisioned it and with some plausible excuse to the authorities, no doubt, started out for a nice quiet place where he could carry on his good work for the betterment of humanity!

  “The ship was heade
d for North America, but a storm arose out of the night when the ship lay presumably not far from the Virginian coasts. The storm drove them south and then out to sea again and raged for three days and three nights driving the ship ahead in its fury. Somewhat crippled, they limped on taking bearings by sun and stars and hoping that land was near. The captain was new to this part of the world and only the offer of more money than he had ever heard of before had brought him this far. He had no idea where the storm had carried them and hopefully had headed west and a little south. One when they saw land they made for it, but a great number of Indians put out in their canoes and in fright the captain ran away.

  “Then, when they were possibly off the coast of Florida, a second time a storm caught them, a storm of hurricane dimensions and again bore them out to sea. During the storm’s wildness the crew in fright and frenzy murdered not only the captain but the two mates, so that when the storm abated at last, the ship’s company found themselves without a single navigator aboard. The crew would have murdered Mentor, too, but he defended himself well.

  “A month passed and now the almost wholly crippled vessel wallowed through the seas and drifted without guidance. Food and water was low and disease was stalking the deck. Mentor, old and broken, now died and was buried at sea. Horace Mentor, the eldest son, took charge.

  “Realizing that all would be lost unless something drastic was done, he ordered the planks torn from the deck’s floor and the women give up their petticoats to make a sail for the single slender mast that stood. Every able-bodied man was forced to take his turn at rowing so that after the sixth day the lookout atop the mast cried ‘Land!’

  “Thus the Mentors came to the coast of Brazil. They found food in plenty, made friends with the Indians and built palm thatched houses for themselves. Spaniards came, but they looked with friendly eyes upon the growing settlement knowing that the Scotch were as deadly enemies of the English as they themselves.”