by Don Wilcox
These six upright cylinders were numbered. I chose Number Six, seeing that the door to it was open.
I sat down inside, glanced over the instruction sheet and followed the orders that the ancient Prince “would have us follow if he were here to enjoy the modern equipment for mental communion.” I closed the door back of me, inserted my arms into the two rubber tubes (enabling me to test my fists on the circular table) and adjusted the screened opening to the level of my face.
I gazed across the table at number three and to the other cylinders on either side of me. I saw that it was impossible to tell whether any of the other five seats were occupied. Eyes could not be seen through the masks.
I coughed—and jumped at the sound. It was a low leaden amplified clack, the sort of empty mechanical bleat that an electric vocoder can transform any human voice into.
I glanced back at the instruction sheet posted inside the cylinder.
“By this superb equipment,” it read, “all facial and vocal expressions are eliminated. All transmission of ideas must take place on the purely mental level.”
A sheeted figure entered the room—hobbled in, I might say. It closed itself in cylinder Number Four. All was silent.
A minute later a tall high-shouldered figure in a long white robe strode across the floor and disappeared within Number Three. There was something marvelous about the anonymity that this equipment gave us. I heard a slightly annoyed grunt from Number Three—or perhaps it was a groan or a sigh. At any rate the tone was exactly the same as my cough of a few moments previous—an unrevealing bleat through the vocoder.
Now there were three of us present. Still there was not a single detail about cylinders Three and Four to distinguish them from One and Two and Five—which I assumed might still be unoccupied.
In time a sheeted figure whose gentle walk reminded me of the first butler I had encountered closed himself within Number Two.
A five minute wait—then Number One entered briskly and marched into the cylinder on my left. Again all was motionless and silent. Then—
“We have gathered in pursuit of the powers we have inherited from the famous Muslim prince, Al-Samir-Reval.”
The vocoder voice issued from number one. I tried to picture the face that was speaking. I couldn’t—not from the inhuman voice. The words were like chunks of dead slate. “I shall call the roll. Number Two.”
“Present.”
“Three.”
“Here.”
“Four.”
“Yes.”
“Five . . . Five.” No answer.
“Six.”
“Present,” I said. All our voices, needless to say, came through on the same identical mechanical pitch. But the sounds told me one thing. There was no one present who did not speak English.
Number One said, “I shall officiate until our membership of six is complete. When that has been achieved and the minds of all members have merged in a telepathic union, my duties as spokesman for Al-Samir-Reval will be done. . . . This morning we have two new candidates. Number Four and Number Six. The official business of this meeting shall be to administer tests for membership. All members shall participate . . . Ahem.”
There was a long pause for effect.
“I’ll begin with a very simple telepathic problem,” One said. “I am thinking of a letter between A and D. When you have the answer, raise your hand.”
Every rubber-encased arm went up, including my own.
“Your answer, Six?”
“The letter is B,” I said.
. “Correct,” said Number One. “I’m thinking of a letter between A and Z.” In a moment all hands were up. Number Four gave the answer as X.
“Wrong,” said One. “You’re not concentrating.”
“It’s H,” said Number Four—and that was right. I knew it was.
Number One passed questions around among Two, Three and Four, each question becoming more difficult. They came back with the right answers. Then the questions came my way again.
“I’m thinking of a number between eleven and seventy-seven.” The rubber-encased arms lifted. “The answer, Six?”
“The number is thirty-nine,” I said. “Correct . . . I’m thinking of a number between one hundred and two thousand. The answer . . . Six?”
I thought swiftly. The answer that came to me was nine hundred and thirty-three; but I said, Nine hundred ninety-three.”
“Correct,” said Number One. “Next we’ll go to names . . .”
After a thorough-going drill that might have downed any novice, Number One brought the session to a close with an official assurance that Numbers Four and Six had passed. Our telepathic powers were such that we would soon come to share our minds with theirs. There was the little matter of a fee, however.
A fee, he said, would be a guarantee of our faith in each other. While we
need not ever know each other as ordinary persons know their friends—by face and form and voice and humdrum habits of gaining a livelihood—we should all become brothers in the mental and spiritual realm of our telepathic forerunner, the great Muslim prince.
The fee that would guarantee this faith, he mentioned, could range as high as a thousand American dollars if we wished; certainly nothing less than a hundred dollars would be considered worthy of this great privilege.
The fee, he added, might be slipped through the slit to be found in the end of either of our rubber arms.
After a minute or so of delay, Number Four spilled some bills onto the table to amount to four hundred dollars.
“And you, Number Six?” came Number One’s mechanical bleat.
“I must confess,” I answered, “that I am not qualified. On one of my answers I made a tongue-slip. If the number I gave was the correct one, then the number I thought was right, but failed to say, must have been wrong. For this mistake I should be disqualified.”
“No,” said One. “You forget our telepathic powers. Each of us realized that you failed to say the number you knew was right. Mentally, each of us made the adjustment you were entitled to on that answer. You are completely qualified to pay your fee and become one of us.”
I forced one hundred and forty American dollars through the rubber casing on my right arm, and my first meeting with the Secret League was declared adjourned. We were instructed to leave in the order we had come, so that the blend of our minds would not confuse us as to our separate physical identities.
Before the next week’s meeting, I did considerable pondering over this matter of telepathy. As I’ve mentioned, it isn’t something that a person ordinarily bothers his head about. I’d never taken lessons in it, like you may have on the piano. But some natural musicians, you know, make some discoveries about piano playing without taking lessons—and that’s what had happened to me in this telepathy business.
As never before, I was on my toes about other people’s thoughts.
Some of my guesses were doubtless off the target. I wasn’t certain whether my strong hunch that Miss Winthrop hoped I would talk with her again was a rash tangent or the real McCoy. Anyway I tried to get a message to her asking her to phone or write me, since I did not have her address; but I got no answer, and assumed that the Arab messenger must have got tired of trying all the doors in the English quarter and gone to sleep.
The one important contact I made during the week, of interest to my telepathy hobby, was Lamar, the nondescript one-armed Arab I had talked with coming up the Nile.
It was rather strange, my running across him. I was crossing from the park in the Place Ezbekieh when I noticed someone walking along the street.
“The first butler,” I said to myself. Then, considering, “Or was it Number Two at the Secret League?”
I had almost overtaken him when he ducked into a tiffin shop, his eyes flashing at me as he moved into the shadows.
“It was the third butler!” I said to myself, “the one with the impertinent nose.”
Then, to make sure I was right, I waited on
the bench outside the shop. I squandered an hour or more. Surely in another minute or two he would emerge. Finally I went in, sauntered down the line of tables.
“Looking for someone?” said a voice, and I saw it was the one-armed nondescript. He invited me to sit down and have tea. By this time I saw that the butler was not in the shop. How or when he had left was really none of my concern, and I turned my attention to the one-armed Arab. We drank tea and talked.
“You still believe that thoughts can be transmitted directly from one brain to another?” he asked, smiling elegantly. “How far do your mental powers go? So far as to tell me my line of business?”
“You sell linen goods and English imported clothing,” I said.
He patted his hands together delightedly. “You are very clever.”
“Not at all,” I said. “You gave me your card as we came up the Nile.
“But you could not tell me—” he stopped and a quick anxious look crossed his brown face. The question he checked was instantly in my mind, by telepathy, and before I had thought through its implication I offered an answer.
“I can tell you,” I said, “that you are carrying a great deal of money. In American dollars alone you have five hundred and forty dollars.”
A sallow paleness came into his cheeks, but he managed a little bow. “Perhaps you are right, perhaps you are wrong. I must be going.”
He rose abruptly, and I was momentarily at a loss to know whether I had embarrassed him.
“There’s no harm in carrying large sums as long as you have deep pockets,” I added pleasantly.
His glance flicked toward his clothing and back at me, and he turned and walked out without another word. My eyes followed him and I concluded that
I had added insult to injury; for plainly he was wearing clothes much too large for him—an incongruous state for one supposed to be in the clothing business. In fact, his clothes were large enough to have fitted the missing butler. I wondered . . .
At the second meeting of the Secret League the interchange of thoughts branched out into ideas more complicated than simple numbers and names. I came away elated. The answers had come easy for me.
I flew back into my work considerably toned up. There’s nothing like a hobby. Especially when you feel as though it’s releasing some natural talent that you knew all along you had, but never got to use properly.
By this time my work, too, was definitely on the right track. I had struck the treasure, and had only to work out plans for its excavation before I would be ready to report back to my headquarters in America.
The third and fourth meetings of the League crystallized several of my observations that had been only half formed at first. I began to know the three different butlers as you might know three St. Bernards from the same litter—minute differences in their strutting and barking, in spite of general similarities.
I came to know the mazes of corridors that led off from the elevator shafts, though I concealed my knowledge from the butlers.
I confirmed my original observation that the elevator rides did not cause any changes in the pressure of my eardrums.
But these matters were slight compared to the leaps I had made in the practice of telepathy. There the ideas were jumping like popcorn.
I came to the fifth meeting realizing that anything could happen.
And I was fully set to see that one thing did happen: It was high time that I had a turn at putting some questions to the others. They knew well enough that I could reach to their minds for answers. But I had never had a square proof that they had a similar reach into mine.
There were pencils and blank papers on the table when I took my place for the fifth meeting. I closed myself in my cylinder, adjusted my arms in the rubber casings, peered through the screen to watch the others arrive—one at a time, as always.
There were still only the five of us, ostensibly. That is to say, no form had ever been seen to enter the fifth of the six places, and no leaden voice had ever sounded from its mouthpiece.
“The time has come,” Number One announced, “that we should delve more deeply into the treasured secrets of our hearts. For each to know the finest and best that the other knows will weld us into the spiritual one-ness that Prince Al-Samir-Reval foresaw for us.”
By turns Numbers One, Two, and Three spent some minutes in silent concentration upon their treasured mysteries. The others of us were asked to relate what we had received. It suddenly became very complicated.
Number Two turned on me and asked me to recite the count of the stones in each layer of one of the pyramids, which he had just now released from his mind. I fell down badly, and Number One shot a cutting remark at me. “Perhaps we’re not so near a spiritual unity as I thought. Number Six, can you write the numbers called for?”
I complied, and Number One allowed the meeting to proceed.
That slight incident aroused my fighting blood.
Then like a blast of cannon-fire through a cloud came a spoken proposal from Number Three.
“I wish to share with you one of the most stupendous pieces of knowledge that man ever possessed. I know the location of a vast treasure, one of the richest ever buried.”
The metallic clank of his words echoed wildly in my ears. I was instantly on my guard.
“I may be the only person in the world,” he continued, “who knows under which of the many so-called caliphs’ tombs the treasure lies, and how it may be found. Think with me, my brothers, while I impart this information to you.”
The dead silence held for a few seconds, then the rubber arms began to come up, indicating that the message had gone across.
I raised my hand with the others. But in truth I had received no message from Three. His knowledge of a treasure was all bluff!
“Number Six fumbled on the last question,” said Number One. “He may have done the same on this.”
“Let him write his answers,” said Number Three. “I’ll see whether he caught all the details.”
“Write,” said Number One.
I swung the pencil into action, then hesitated. “I’ll write if the rest of you will do the same.”
Number One made a slight reach, but evidently thought better of it. “The rest of us have checked our results mentally,” he said. “Write.”
I wrote: “King Tut’s Tomb. Dig till you find it.” I passed the paper across the table.
“This is an outrage!” Number Three clacked. He recited my words without picking up the paper. “I can’t understand this levity! I specifically referred to the tombs of the caliphs!”
“Levity constitutes a breach of faith!” Number One snapped crustily. “Al-Samir-Reval’s rule was death to any member who would trifle with his brother’s trust.”
“I don’t wish to be hasty in judgment,” said Number Three, “If Six didn’t know the rule give him another chance to comply. Let him write the full answer within the next three minutes.”
“Be quick about it, then!” Number One barked. “We allow you three minutes—”
“I’ll take them,” I cut in, “to ask you some question!” In that tense moment everything came clear to me. I plunged. “Listen! As a paid member, I demand the right to test you as you’ve tested me!” I slipped my gun down toward the fingers of my right hand.
“Don’t be childish!”
“Answer up with your hands,” I said, “as quick as you catch my message. Here it is: I’m thinking of the most fascinating discovery I’ve made since I got quick at this game of reading other people’s minds. What’s my discovery? Hands, please!”
No hands responded.
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s a rare secret gift that has come down—to you—through the hands of a few rare magicians and sorcerers—”
No hands.
“A gift to be envied by actors—” Still no hands. I hurled my challenge like thunderbolts.
“What? You don’t know? Or do you? If you do, you’re trying to keep it a secret from me. But you can’t
! I got it from you by mental telepathy . . . All right, I’ll give it back to you straight! My discovery is this: Someone here has the rare gift of being able to change his features and his bodily form!”
There was a dead silence, but I didn’t let it last. I was full of words that wouldn’t hold back.
“Generations will come and go without ever guessing that blackest of man’s secrets. But wait until the day that mental telepathy sweeps out the dark corners. You rare Proteans won’t have such a sweet advantage. Your Jekyll-and-Hyde acts will come right square under telepathy’s searchlight! There’ll be a ventilation of all the skullduggery your breed gets away with!”
“Your three minutes are up!” Number One snarled. “You’ll die!”
“I’ll take three more!” I clanked. “What am I thinking, Number One?” His clipped words came back fast. “You’re thinking you’ve violated all the rules sacred to the prince. You’ve come back at a brother’s test question with a ridiculous answer. You’re thinking that if you don’t come through with a quick answer on that treasure you’ll never see daylight!”
I laughed, and the laughter clacked out in the same even key as his threat.
“Your telepathy was never at lower ebb, Number One! Take a straight look at my thoughts and you’ll see that killing me wouldn’t gain a thing for a certain butler-turned-Arab named Lamar!”
I jabbed my gun through the slit in my rubber arm.
“Wait, Hammond! Hold it!” The monotone outcry spilled from the mouthpieces of Numbers One, Two, Three and Four simultaneously. A single voice from everywhere!
Bang! I shot through Number One. I turned my gun on Number Two.
And because my mental telepathy told me exactly what I was doing, I pulled the trigger all of four times. One bullet punctured each of the first four upright cylinders.
Then I turned the gun toward Number Five. On the instant the vocoder’s mechanical monotone was broken by the scream of a girl.
“Don’t! Don’t kill him!” Her cries came from under the circular table.
I held my gun on Number Five. “Come out, Lamar. I’ve got ammunition enough to blow you through the wall.”
