The Collected Stories

by Earl

  He did not recognize the man revealed—tall, dark, wearing hornrimmed glasses.

  “What is it?” he asked, making no move to open the door.

  “I’m from your office,” the image replied. “Mr. Beckwith sent me.”

  MAUSSER sighed. Did his office affairs always have to follow him to his bed? This must be some clerk he hadn’t noticed before, but then there were so many. The name Beckwith at least was bona fide, and he knew that part of the office force worked all night. Mausser held the door open.

  Seated opposite one another, Mausser eyed his visitor quizzically. He had a slight suspicion of possible danger in admitting an unknown man late at night, but no fear of it. His hand rested carelessly on his easy chair’s arm, an inch from a concealed button. Pressed, the button would instantly summon an armed attendant from the room across the hall. “Well?” he queried.

  “I don’t understand, sir.” The visitor was opening up his brief-case. He looked puzzled. “Mr. Beckwith told me you had called for a clerk to take something back. Some paper.”

  “What?” Mausser was puzzled, in turn. “I made no such call.” Suspicion leaped into his face. “Who are you?” he demanded. “You don’t look like a clerk—”

  The last word trailed away into a deep sigh. Mausser’s eyes closed and his head lolled. He was sound asleep, under the influence of the projector in Hale’s grip. Hale had slipped it out while talking, and pressed the button for the anesthetic ray to stream forth.

  Holding the projector, Hale glowered at the limp form. As with Paxton and Asquith, bitter hatred surged through him. This man had been the prosecutor at the trial. Step by step he had led the jury through a morass of half-truths and outright lies. Hale remembered how his fat white face had leered triumphantly, how his oily, smug voice had declaimed against the helpless defendant. He had not had one shred of pity for a young man being sent to lifelong exile.

  “You have a black heart, Jonathan Mausser,” Hale hissed at the unhearing man. “But it doesn’t show through your white, clean skin.”

  Hale stirred.

  He placed the ray projector on a nearby end table, propping it with books so it kept Mausser’s brain in focus. Then he was free to work with both hands. From his brief-case he took a sealed ampule that held an amber liquid whose amazing property had first been conceived in the mind of Dr. Allison.

  FOR a moment Hale hesitated. Did even black-hearted Jonathan Mausser deserve such a fate? Hale shrugged grimly. This was not just revenge. It was a blow against the Five’s sinister plot.

  Hesitating no longer, Hale broke off the glass tip of the ampule. He held open the limp jaws and let the liquid trickle down the unconscious man’s throat. The reflexive throat muscles swallowed automatically. All the liquid was gone in one moment.

  Hale put the empty ampule in his case, straightened the books. Snapping off the ray projector, he quickly dropped it into the case.

  Mausser jerked to attention, blinking his eyes. He had the same confused air Paxton and Asquith had had. He also did not realize he had been in a sound slumber for several minutes.

  It was Hale’s opportunity to go.

  “Mr. Beckwith must have made a mistake,” he said, and moved to the door.

  “Wait a minute!” muttered Mausser. “I’ve seen you somewhere before. I—” He rubbed his forehead, utterly bewildered.

  “You aren’t feeling well, sir?” Hale smiled saturninely. “I’m sure you’ll feel better after a night’s sleep.”

  He left almost abruptly, yet with undeniable courtesy.

  Jonathon Mausser sat frowning for a moment. He didn’t like the mysterious episode at all. How could Beckwith have made such a childish blunder? Then Mausser gasped.

  He certainly had seen that face before, in the visi-screen when Paxton had called—Dr. Strato!

  Mausser pressed the button on his chair’s arm. Instantly an electric mechanism flung open the door, and the one across the hall. The guard who had been seated there, reading, leaped up and ran into Mausser’s presence, gun in hand.

  “Quick! Get the man who left here a minute ago.” Mausser described him hastily. “Hurry!”

  The guard returned in five minutes, shaking his head.

  “Can’t find a single trace of him, sir,” he said apologetically.

  Mausser dismissed him, and sat down to think. He looked at his hands suddenly in fear. Paxton and the Golden Touch, Asquith and his blood-dyed hands. Had the mysterious Dr. Strato done anything to his hands?

  But nothing showed. Nothing was wrong. Jonathan Mausser wiped his hot forehead in relief. Whatever strange reason the sinister Dr. Strato had had for coming, he had done nothing. Nevertheless he must be apprehended. It was too late now, but tomorrow von Grenfeld and his men would have to arrest the man and fourth-degree him into revealing his motives.

  Mausser went to bed wearily, vaguely aware of a sweetish taste in his mouth. Too much rich food lately, he told himself.

  When he awoke in the morning though, he felt strange. He had the peculiar sensation that something had been working within him all night. He cursed himself, sitting at the edge of the bed. Imagination prodded into overactivity by Dr. Strato’s visit. He arose to wash.

  IN the white-tiled bathroom, he turned on the water faucet. And then he saw his hand. His sleep-puffed eyes opened wide for the first time.

  His hand was black—as black as coal against the white porcelain basin!

  Like a man in a nightmare, he raised both hands before his eyes, turning them in slow dread. They were both inky black!

  Dr. Strato had done something to him, after all.

  Mausser could hardly bear the thought of the slightest mutilation. He had always been extremely fastidious. Now he held his black hands at arm’s-length, half gasping and half sobbing, striving somehow to disown them. Had Dr. Strato beaten him with a whip, he could not have hurt Mausser more.

  “Good God!” he moaned.

  And then he shrieked.

  His bulging eyes stared in the mirror. The eyes that stared back at him were white—white holes set in a black face!

  It was a ghastly effect. Cringing in fearful anticipation, Mausser drew up his pajama arms. His arms were black. He ripped off the pajama suit and stood naked.

  He was black from head to toe!

  The full realization of it swept over Mausser. In a frenzy, he grabbed soap and water and tried to wash off the horrible black color. When he gave up, he was sobbing like a scared woman. He reeled away from the damning mirrors, threw himself on his bed. It was something within himself, some cursed change in his very skin. The diabolical Dr. Strato had changed his white, fair skin to an incredible, unrecognizable black. How, it did not matter. It had been done.

  Jonathan Mausser wept wretchedly.

  WATCHING in his spy ray screen, Hale felt no slightest pity for him. Up in Strato-prison, for an eternity, Richard Hale had been the most wretched being alive. Mausser was paying in a considerably lesser coin of misery.

  Even Hale was amazed at the overnight change of white skin to black. However, his albino guinea-pigs, experimented on months before, had changed that almost miraculously. The amber liquid was an elixir of pigmentation. Working through the bloodstream, it had deposited its melanine in the capillaries.

  Dr. Allison had also propounded the reverse of the process, in their long scientific discussion in Strato-prison. He had suspected the existence of an agent that could absorb melanine. He had talked rather enthusiastically of using this to make all the human race white in color. Perhaps he had surmised that it might one day bring about a true brotherhood of the white and colored races. But that had been sheer speculation, to while away time in their lonely cell. The black-producing agent had concerned Hale most, for revenge on Jonathan Mausser.

  Hale continued to keep the blackskinned figure of Mausser in his screen, in the following hours. . . .

  CHAPTER XV

  Black Doom

  JONATHAN MAUSSER became somewhat calmer, pr
esently.

  But a thought sent cold shock through his mind. There was no time to waste. The decree closing the stock exchange must be issued this morning. Later he would contact his companions and deal with Dr. Strato. Right now, black skin or not, he must rush to his office.

  He shuddered sensitively at the thought of venturing out in this condition, but there was no help for it. He hastily washed and dressed, trying to keep his mind off the fact that every inch of his skin was melanoid. Nevertheless he could not resist taking a last look at himself in the mirror.

  A black, strange face peered back at him. His normally black, wavy hair suited well—too well—giving him the appearance of a respectable colored gentleman. He hardly knew himself. The cast of light on black skin had even seemed to blunt his features.

  He took a breath before opening his apartment door. His pulses hammered in a sickening fashion. He hated to expose himself to the public eye, but he resolutely stepped out. Guiltily he looked up and down the hall before going to the elevators. While he waited for an elevator, another man strolled up. He gave Mausser only a casual glance. Mausser breathed a little easier.

  Down in the street, the hurrying morning crowds paid him no attention. For the moment, Mausser basked in the thought that soon these people, and everyone on Earth, would know him as one of their five rulers. Then he saw his hand. A dread thought shook him. What if the black color were permanent? It was too frightening a thought to continue. His only immediate concern must be to reach his office, issue the decree.

  His limousine as usual stood at the curb, ready to take him to the office. Mausser strode to it, opened the back door, and was about to step in.

  A hand clutched his arm, pulling him back.

  “Just a minute, sir,” said his chauffeur. “I think you’ve made a mistake. This is Mr. Jonathan Mausser’s car.”

  “Good Morning George. Drive me to the office quickly. I’m—Jonathan Mausser.”

  The chauffeur smiled, as if at a child.

  “I’m sure, sir, that we don’t have to discuss that point.”

  “You fool, don’t tell me who I am!” Mausser’s nerves had snapped. “Can’t you see I’m Jonathan Mausser?”

  “Mr. Mausser is a white man,” replied the chauffeur evenly.

  Mausser stood gasping. He thought of going on, then changed his mind. He didn’t want people ogling him. Nor did he feel, at the moment, like explaining patiently to his driver about the weird transformation of his skin.

  Turning away from the polite but firm driver, he took a taxi.

  At the Federal Building he made his way toward the inner sanctum of the Secretary of Law—his offices. He was stopped by a polite clerk.

  “Whom do you wish to see, sir? Do you have an appointment?” the clerk asked.

  “I’m Jonathan Mausser, your employer. I know I have a black skin, but look at me and you’ll see I still have the features and body of Jonathan Mausser.”

  MAUSSER became panic-stricken when he saw the refusal to believe in the clerk’s face. A knot of people gathered from the large outer office. He tried to appeal to them, naming some. His words made no sense to them. His voice and general demeanor might be puzzlingly like that of Jonathan Mausser, but his black skin destroyed the illusion.

  As Mausser himself had noticed, even his facial features were alien because of different shadings. Stage actors did wonders with a little greasepaint and coloring. A totally black face was no more recognizable than that of a black-face comedian.

  A policeman politely took his arm and firmly guided him away. Mausser thought of demanding to be taken to Ivan von Grenfeld, police chief, but realized he would again have to run a gauntlet of lesser officials.

  Out on the street, he thought frantically. Time was flying. The decree must be signed. Soon it would be too late. He must get in touch with one of his colleagues somehow. His eyes lighted as he spied a public visi-phone booth. That was the answer.

  He dialed the offices of Asquith, von Grenfeld and Paxton in turn. In each case polite under-officials who knew Jonathan Mausser stared at his black face and argued with him, refusing to connect him. It seemed hopeless. Mausser began to have the nightmarish feeling of being trapped in an invisible net.

  Then, seemingly by a miracle, he was given direct connection with Dr. Gordy.

  “Mausser?” barked Gordy. “For God’s sake, where have you been? Why haven’t you signed that paper? Do you realize the stock exchange is a madhouse and—”

  He stopped. His image stared out of the visi-screen.

  “Why, you aren’t Jonathan Mausser!”

  “But I am!” quavered Mausser. “Listen, Gordy—”

  With an angry snort, Dr, Gordy’s face vanished. He had hung up. That had been his last slim chance, Mausser realized, and now he turned away with sagging shoulders.

  The devilish maddening situation he was in was sheer agony. He had to bite his lips—black lips—to keep from screaming aloud. When he walked, every store-window reflection showed him the image of a blackskinned man. Mausser’s sensitive pride felt that sharply. His fastidious soul squirmed.

  He did not know how long he walked among jostling crowds who accepted him as a black man. But he did know he suffered an eternity of misery.

  Suddenly he jerked himself alert. In his personal concern he had almost-forgotten the greater issue of the stock exchange. He must not give up. There was still a way. Back in his apartment he would wait for a call from one of his companions. They must be trying constantly. And there, in his own apartment, he could convince them his black face was Mausser’s.

  He let himself into his apartment with a sob of relief. All he had to do was wait for his visi-phone to ring.

  Then he looked around and saw the figure standing there.

  “Dr. Strato!” he gasped.

  HALE smiled sardonically. “I know you, Jonathan Mausser,” he said pointedly. “Even though you have a black skin!”

  “You gave me this curse!” Mausser choked. His pulses throbbed in fear and rage.

  “You look rather well in a black skin. It matches your black heart!” drawled Hale.

  “You won’t get away with this, Strato. I’ll—” Mausser’s eyes darted about wildly.

  Hale stood before the chair with the guard-summoning button. He might be armed, though he stood stiffly, with his hands empty.

  “Don’t do anything rash,” cautioned Hale easily, as if reading his mind. “Listen to me for a moment. It is already too late for you to sign that decree. At the stock exchange, majority stock in Transport passed into new hands five minutes ago. The Transport monopoly is broken!”

  Mausser groaned. The worst had happened.

  “But how do you know all this?” he cried, his brain whirling. “Who are you?”

  The tall, dark man’s eyes burned.

  “I’m your enemy. The enemy of the Five. I know all your plans, all your moves. I know your scheme to take over the Government of Earth. I will stop you Five. I gave Paxton his Golden Touch, Asquith his bloody hands, and you your black skin to match your black heart. You will go through life with a black skin, Jonathan Mausser. It will never go away. Never!”

  Mausser backed away as Hale slowly advanced.

  “You have the soul of a coward, Mausser. You couldn’t stand going through life with a black skin. You would go mad. And you will never have the rule of Earth you planned. Your life is ruined. What have you to live for?”

  Mausser was moaning as the words bit deeply into his tortured mind. Then back of him he felt the drawer of a writing-desk. In it lay a gun. Frantically he pulled the drawer open and snatched up the weapon. Leveling it, he shot again and again at Hale.

  Dr. Strato was no more than ten feet away. He had not moved or brought up a weapon. Yet he stood there smiling, unharmed.

  Mausser stared hypnotically. He could not have missed. The energy charges had ripped viciously against the wall directly behind Dr. Strato. Yet there he stood, alive and unharmed!

  “
Save one shot for yourself!” Dr. Strato snapped.

  Then, slowly, he took off his glasses. He turned his face up to the fullest light.

  “Look at me, Jonathan Mausser. Look at me!”

  Mausser stared in horror. His shaken mind received one more staggering shock. His lips formed three silent syllables, as though he feared to speak them aloud. Deliberately, then, he raised his gun and fired his next-to-the-last charge pointblank at Dr. Strato’s chest. The shot struck the wall behind, but made not the slightest mark on the projected three-dimensional figure.

  Mausser’s voice came, hollow, croaking, while his hand raised.

  “You—are—the—ghost—of—Richard Hale!”

  The last charge hissed out of his own gun, destroying the brain of Jonathan Mausser. He fell lifeless.

  When the guard from the room across the hall burst in a moment later, he found only the body. The visi-phone was insistently ringing. The guard snapped it on.

  Dr. Emanuel Gordy’s face peered out tensely.

  “Is Mausser in? Tell him he must sign those papers, before it’s altogether too late!”

  * * * * * *

  BACK in his laboratory, Richard Hale grimly complimented himself. It had been necessary to drive Jonathan Mausser to self-destruction, not as part of his revenge, but to prevent Mausser from closing the stock exchange at the last moment.

  Hale had known the susceptible Mausser would succumb. The Golden Touch to Paxton meant deep misery. The blood-dyed hands to Asquith would slowly drive him mad. But in the case of the fastidious Mausser, a black skin meant certain suicide. Hale had only hastened the process.

  Mausser had seen his gun shots fail to touch the projected image of his tormentor. And at the last moment, recognizing the true identity of Dr. Strato, he could only think he was haunted by the ghost of Richard Hale. For Richard Hale had died, unquestionably, trying to escape Strato-prison two years before!

  Hale laughed. He broke off his ruminations. There was no time to be idle. He turned back to his spy ray screen, tuning the range dials. His spy ray probed out, to keep watch on the Five, and their next move. The Five? It was the Four now!