The Collected Stories

by Earl

  The Four, in Mausser’s apartment, stared down at the body.

  “It’s Mausser, all right,” grunted von Grenfeld. “With a black skin.”

  “Dead!” Paxton shivered. “While the decree remains unsigned, I can’t stop the stock exchange raid.”

  “It’s the work of Dr. Strato!” whispered Asquith. “First Paxton’s Golden Touch. Then my blood-dyed hands, Now Mausser’s black skin!” He looked at Gordy and von Grenfeld significantly. “If his plans include you two—”

  They exchanged worried glances. For the first time they began to realize the magnitude of the forces against them—clever, almost weird science—and swift, unexpected blows.

  “We have been lax,” Gordy grated. “Some powerful group is striking at us. We must crush them. Von Grenfeld, gather a squad of your men, fully armed. You and I will go and have this Dr. Strato arrested. We will bring him back for questioning.”

  He looked down at the body again.

  “No,” he added. “We’ll take no chances. Three squads of men. He has some devilish science at his controls. Three squads of police though, will be more than he can handle alone, unless he’s none but Lucifer himself!”

  Dr. Gordy knew now that they were opposed by a formidable enemy. But he did not realize it was Dr. Strato, one man.

  NUMBERS four and five together—a nice catch!” Richard Hale told himself in grim humor.

  The door had opened on Ivan von Grenfeld and Dr. Emanuel Gordy. Behind them stood a dozen police, pistols in hand. They pushed their way into the living room. Outside were two other squads of armed men, on guard watchfully.

  “You’re under arrest, Dr. Strato!” barked von Grenfeld peremptorily. “Come with us.”

  Hale thought rapidly. His blood tingled, but he was not alarmed. Its, was a game of wits and certain advantages were on his side. He had known they were coming, and in what force. He knew they knew nothing of his anesthetic ray. As a last resort, the hidden switch within reach would spray down the anesthetic ray from the concealed ceiling projector in this room. The switch was also wired to operate a more sweeping ray before the house itself. It would include all the men outside.

  But Hale, enjoying the role of cat-and-mouse, as they had once sadistically enjoyed sending him to prison, decided to maneuver them to the laboratory, without the men.

  “What, for?” Hale pretended indignant surprise.

  “For questioning.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  Five Steps—or Six?

  IT was Dr. Gordy who had retorted.

  Their eyes met. Gordy was staring curiously, A man of science himself, he wondered how this mysterious scientist had touched his three companions with his strange curses. Hale stared back with a different interest. He hoped the hatred within him did not burn in his eyes.

  “I have the right to know about what,” Hale countered.

  Von Grenfeld glared, but again Gordy spoke.

  “Your air of innocence won’t save you. We want to question you about a certain Golden Touch, a pair of blood-dyed hands, and a dead man with a black skin!”

  Hale smiled slowly, mockingly. “Wiry not question me here?” he asked easily. “Shall we go to the privacy of my laboratory? Or are you perhaps afraid?”

  Von Grenfeld bristled at the word. He was a big, strong man of action who had always prided himself on being able to handle any situation. Dr. Strato’s challenge and derisive smile lashed that pride.

  “You don’t scare me, Dr. Strato,” he rumbled. “I’m no weakling or coward like—”

  “Shut up, you fool!” snapped Gordy. It was not yet the time, nor before the police, to reveal the Five’s connection. He looked at Hale steadily. “We will question you—alone. I would like to see your laboratory.”

  “Don’t try any tricks, Dr. Strato,” warned von Grenfeld. Turning to his men he said loudly: “If we are not back in five minutes, follow.”

  He stepped forward confidently with Gordy. Hale led them to the laboratory, where they were out of earshot of the police.

  Von Grenfeld stood warily, ready for action. Dr. Gordy looked around the room, his eyes appreciative of the laboratory’s excellent facilities. Then he faced Hale.

  “How did you give Paxton his Golden Touch, and Asquith his bloody hands, and Mausser his black skin? Who are you, Dr. Strato? Who is back of you?”

  Hale smiled slowly.

  “You’ll talk, or else,” boomed von Grenfeld. His craggy face glanced around uneasily. The laboratory, with shades partly drawn, was ominously gloomy. His voice sharpened. “Let me warn you I am a fast draw with a pistol, and a deadly shot. Now talk!”

  “I’m in your hands,” shrugged Hale. “I’ll have to talk. I’ll just say this—”

  He turned casually.

  “Stop! Don’t touch those switches!” cried Gordy. “Von Grenfeld, watch him!”

  The latter was already drawing his pistol.

  Hale froze for an instant. The sharp-eyed Gordy had spotted the switches. If von Grenfeld held him at bay with his gun . . . Fleetingly, Hale cursed himself for taking any chances. His thoughts raced on. He was nearer von Grenfeld than the switches. If he hesitated he was surely lost—

  ALL this he realized in lightning thought, with everything at stake for which he had suffered and planned. Actually, Hale moved almost at the same instant Gordy spoke, and toward von Grenfeld. His fist crashed against the big man’s chin.

  Von Grenfeld staggered back. He recovered, snapped up his gun and fired at Hale. But Hale had turned catlike and leaped toward the switches. The shot skimmed past Hale’s ear, crashing into the far wall. Von Grenfeld had missed in the gloom—gloom that to Hale’s prison-conditioned eyes was normal.

  Von Grenfeld, with an oath, began to squeeze the trigger again, but the shot never came. His finger relaxed. His tall form toppled to the floor as the anesthetic ray projector’s beam stabbed forward in a spreading cone. Dr. Gordy, within its influence, crumpled to the floor where he had scurried forward.

  Hale knifed down two more switches in quick succession.

  In the room beyond the laboratory he heard the thud of falling bodies. The anesthetic ray there had caught all the police in mid-stride. And when he stepped to the window he saw that the men on guard outside lay prone under another invisible cone. In the isolated house and near vicinity. not a soul was awake except Hale. Even a bird outside, near the men, had fallen in the middle of its flight.

  Hale nodded in satisfaction. Dr. Allison himself, though he had conceived the anesthetic ray, had not realized its possibilities.

  Hale worked swiftly now. He moved up an apparatus that looked like an iron-lung with its top rolled away. It took considerable exertion to lift von Grenfeld’s limp figure into the machine while keeping his own head out of range of the sleep-beam. He closed the cover and turned its outside switch. An AP-unit hummed to life, shooting all its surging power through the apparatus. A glow surrounded the body of von Grenfeld.

  Hale watched a meter closely. Fifteen minutes later he turned the droning machine off, took out the limp form, and propped it in a chair.

  Hale stood back, wearing a smile that was half triumph, half bitterness.

  “You are proud of that fine, strong body of yours, von Grenfeld,” he murmured, “Yet you were willing to let mine rot away in Strato-prison!” Dr. Gordy was next—and last.

  As a matter of precaution, Hale went again to the front window and looked out. No one stirred out there. Then he noticed the fourth car. There had only been three squad cars, in which the police had come. The fourth must have arrived and stopped a moment before Hale had switched on the anesthetic ray barrage. He had failed to notice it the first time he looked out. Who was in it?

  Hale left the house by a side door and strode to the car. He saw the figure there, half-leaning against the open door, caught in artificial sleep just in the act of stepping out. “Laura Asquith!” Hale gasped.

  HE stood for a moment, thinking.

  Then, knowing the ran
ge of the beam, he was just able to keep out of it and grasp her limp, outflung hand, and drag her toward him. As she passed out of the sphere of influence, her eyelids fluttered open. Blue eyes looked bewilderedly into his.

  “Dr. Strato!” she cried. “I had to come to see you. It’s about my uncle, Peter Asquith, and his hands—”

  She drew in her breath in alarm when she noticed the limp forms of the police.

  “What happened?”

  “Come with me,” Hale said gruffly, taking her hand.

  He led her into the laboratory by the side door. Her eyes widened as she saw the inert bodies of von Grenfeld and Dr. Gordy. She faced him with quiet firmness.

  “Now I’m certain of it,” she said. “You are avenging—Richard Hale!” Hale started. Did she know the full truth? But her next words quieted his pulse.

  “You must be some old friend of his. I thought I had met all he knew. Still, you seem vaguely familiar.” She peered at him intently.

  Hale was glad of the half-light. He spoke slowly.

  “Yes. I am the avenger of Richard Hale. Five men sent an innocent man to Strato-prison for life. Five men—and a girl!”

  Laura’s hand went to her throat.

  “You mean me, of course,” she said softly. “You did something to three of the men. You have two here. And I suppose I’m on the list. Well, I came here to tell you I know he was innocent too. I know that now. My uncle lied to me, convinced me that Richard Hale was a traitor by a hundred half-truths and false statements. But I’ve had time to think it all out. Too much time, for five years. I loved him, but I turned against him. And I’ve hated myself for it!”

  Hale rocked back on his feet. She had been a dupe at the trial, herself a pawn in the Five’s cunning legal trap. She had not, as he had bitterly thought for five years, turned against him in full knowledge of the Five’s plot. She was not the cold, scheming woman who had been promised a high place in the new regime! She was the sweet, wonderful Laura he had known prior to New Year’s Eve of 2000!

  The giddy thoughts whirled in Hale’s brain. He took a step forward eagerly—and stopped. His lips twisted. The truth suddenly struck him like a sledge blow.

  “You lie!” he grated in a dry, cold voice. “You knew you were next on the list. You’ve come to save yourself. You hoped I’d be deceived and thus relent. I didn’t have you on the list, though. I had decided to let you go.”

  The girl drew back from his blazing eyes.

  “No, Dr. Strato! Please!”

  Brutally he pushed her. She stumbled back into the influence of the anesthetic ray. Her mouth still open in appeal, she dropped limply. Hale caught her, sat her in a seat.

  He stood back, his blood pounding. Had he for a mad moment believed her, and believed that he still loved her? Had he been fool enough to forget those three long frustrated years? But the remembrance hung before him now, charging his veins with bitterness.

  He shook himself. No time to waste.

  Dr. Gordy was next—but not last!

  RICHARD HALE finished with Gordy in ten minutes. He had injected a crystal-clear chemical within the pineal gland at the back of Gordy’s head. An open surgery book showed him the exact method of operation so there would be no injury to nerves or brain.

  Then he turned to the girl.

  The liquid he now held in his hand was a concentrated solution of a hormone. The hormone of old age, Dr. Allison had termed it, an agent that would rob the skin cells of their lymph. They would become dry, old, wrinkled. Laura, at the age of twenty-four, would have the skin of a hag of ninety!

  Hale had made the hormone and then set it aside. He had decided not to use it—until today. But now, after she had come here to add lie on lie, he saw that he must do it. He would make her ugly, ruin her lovely face and fair skin. Had she cared for him while she realized he was dying a slow death up in Strato-prison?

  He came close to her, holding a hypodermic loaded with the old-age hormone that would destroy her youthful beauty. He bared her arm.

  Then suddenly he flung the hypodermic away, with a groan.

  He could not do it!

  In that moment, staring at her, Hale realized he had not learned to hate her. In spite of what she had done, and what he knew her to be, all the old love for her remained.

  His revenge against the Five, now completed, seemed empty. What mad spirit had prompted him to act the part of an avenging monster? The whole fantastic web of it seemed the delirium of a dread dream. He had taken the science treasures of long-suffering Dr. Allison in good faith, and used them meanly, basely. The old scientist had meant them as blessings. Hale had used them as instruments of torture.

  For five minutes he stood, his thoughts a damning squirrel-cage. Then he shook his head to clear it.

  His motives had not been purely personal. At least there was the saving grace of his opposition to the Five’s plot. And he must go on now as he had planned. He glanced once more at Laura. When she knew who he really was, he knew she could think of him only as a fiend.

  But Hale set his lips in a straight line. He opened the switch of the anesthetic ray bathing the three limp forms. Instantly they sat up, eyes blinking and dazed. Finally they focused on Hale and the gun he held.

  HALE spoke slowly and grimly. “I am your enemy, Dr. Gordy. You wish to be dictator of Earth. I will prevent you. There is no organization behind me. I work alone. Yet I have scientific powers, already demonstrated, which you can’t oppose. I know all your plans and moves. Transport is now broken as a monopoly. If you foolishly choose to go on, despite that blow, I’ll defeat you step by step. Will you pledge now to give up your aim at world power?”

  The ringleader of the Five seemed to recover quickly from the bewilderment of the last episode. Defiance shown from his eyes.

  “No!” he snapped. “You can’t stop me!”

  “You seem to forget,” Hale said coldly, “that at this moment I could kill you!”

  The scientist blanched. Von Grenfeld growled, though his undertones were those of fear. Laura stared silently, without expression.

  “But I don’t take it upon myself to dispose of human life with my own hand,” Hale went on. “And I am certain of stopping you in my own way. Every move you make is known to me in advance. And each will bring my counter-move. I will let you think this all over for a time. When you are finally convinced of your helplessness before my power, you will come to me.”

  “Bluff, pure bluff, my theatrical friend,” von Grenfeld retorted loudly. “We are not the sort to be intimidated by mysterious words, or threat of death!”

  Hale smiled enigmatically. “You also forget Paxton’s Golden Touch, Asquith’s bloody hands, and Mausser’s black skin! I’m putting you to sleep again. A timed mechanism will wake you in an hour. I’ll be gone. I have another more secret laboratory. I leave you this one.”

  With his hand on the switch, he looked at the two men mockingly before his glance flicked over Laura.

  “When you are ready to acknowledge defeat,” he concluded, “contact me by radio on fifteen hundred megacycles and offer personal surrender.” He closed the switch. The three forms instantly collapsed into the limpness of induced sleep.

  CHAPTER XVII

  The Invisible Brain

  VON GRENFELD awoke to the sound of a muffled explosion. He sprang to his feet, peering around quickly in the half-lighted laboratory. The mysterious Dr. Strato had gone, as he had said he would. An hour had passed. Dr. Gordy and Laura were staggering to their feet. Von Grenfeld strode to the windows, raised the blinds.

  When he turned, Dr. Gordy was running his eyes over a shambles of broken apparatus, the work of a series of gun shots. The vital heart of every instrument was shattered. A tiny AP-pellet had exploded within the ray-projector that had mysteriously held them asleep.

  “He left nothing of his science,” Gordy gritted in the tones of a curse. “I had hoped to examine his apparatus. He is a menace to us.”

  “We’ll get him,” rumbled
von Grenfeld angrily. “I’ll send out my men to search for him, thousands of them if necessary—”

  Dr. Gordy was staring at him strangely, in the full light of the afternoon sun.

  “Von Grenfeld! There’s something changed in you!”

  At that moment the door burst open and the police who had awakened from their long sleep rushed in, eyes dazed.

  Von Grenfeld faced them with hands on hips, his anger transferred to them.

  “Very prompt action!” he roared. “The house could burn down before you dense-witted—”

  His bull voice stopped. He choked. His eyes were wide and his strong features went loose. For the men towered over their commander as though they were giants.

  Von Grenfeld’s eyes swung to Dr. Gordy beside him. The scientist had been a man of a scant five and a half feet. Yet even he loomed almost a full head over the police commander. Had they all suddenly grown a foot?

  And then the stunning truth struck von Grenfeld like a blow against his skull. He was shorter! He had been reduced from his six-feet-two to a pygmy five feet! Every person in the room, even the girl, was taller than he was now.

  Von Grenfeld’s features twisted in anguish. The pride he had always had for his handsome and impressive figure fled like a wailing ghost. He felt as though he had been cut physically in half. He scampered to a mirror, found he had to strain to reach it.

  “Good God!” he screamed. Even his voice had lost its former virility. “Dr. Strato has done this to me—made me small, insignificant. . . .”

  Gordy looked at him pityingly. But suddenly he started in fear. He looked down at his body, felt his arms, searched for signs of what might have been done to him. The Golden Touch, bloody hands, black skin, reduced stature—In what way had Dr. Strato cursed him? He drew a sigh of relief after a moment. Nothing, apparently.

  “We’ll go,” he said. “This matter of Dr. Strato has to be discussed very seriously.”