by Don Wilcox
CHAPTER IX
Into the Magic River
Louise walked with Bob Porter Porter into the invisible river of magic.
“Don’t be surprised,” he said, “if you forget everything.”
“I can only think of the dancing chess-men just now,” Louise said, “and the astonishment in James’ face when he couldn’t make them behave.”
“Your will was working on them,” said Bob. “This is the unbelievable I’ve been wanting you to see. When we sat at the chess table we were in the edge of this invisible stream. That’s why the chess-men were so responsive to our wishes”
“And the jewels?”
“Yes, and the sand beneath our feet, and our own dancing shoes, and the very shadows of the moonbeams. But I don’t expect you to understand so quickly.”
Louise caught Bob’s arm. Her gasp was of mixed amazement and delight.
“Colors!” Louise exclaimed. “I see the colors again that I saw when you vanished last night.”
“The river,” said Bob. “It’s all around us. And a rare sight. But I was sure you’d find yourself in harmony with it. I’ve suspected it for a long time.”
“And what if I weren’t in harmony with it? It could have happened so.”
“You’d walk right through it without ever knowing it was there. You would see only the wooded ravine with its steep black banks. And you might get mired down in it. But as long as you can see the brightness you’re all right.”
“It’s like walking through a deep blue night sky,” said Louise, “that is filled with a million little colored stars, so tiny that they brush my forehead and cheeks and hands. They must be tiny particles of dust, magically illuminated.”
“Is the river so dark?” Bob asked.
“It’s coming brighter now,” said Louise. “It’s all purple and redeyes, and golden, too, where the tiny little stars are closest together.”
“Your vision is growing clearer rapidly. Tell me, Louise, are you still walking or are you standing still, or—”
“We stopped walking minutes ago,” said Louise, glancing down at her feet. “And this time our shoes aren’t trying to carry on for us. And yet we seem to be moving. We’re floating along, sometimes with the current, sometimes against. Where are we going?”
“While in the invisible river we can go anywhere—in effect—for the arms of this mighty stream seem to reach out to the whole continent. Would you like to pay a brief visit to Washington? You have only to wish.” Through the riot of color that swam before her eyes, Louise seemed to be seeing the wings of the capital building approach to engulf her. Then she was within one of the familiar corridors where a well-known painting stood clear before her.
The hum of voices filled her ears. Wisps of conversation could be gathered from passersby. Two Washington correspondents stopped to discuss a matter that came close to home.
“I don’t know who started the rumor,” one of them said, “but it sounds reasonable to me. James Stark has rushed back from South America to wrap that scientific conference up and chuck it in his own vest pocket. Now if he can marry Miss Citizen in the bargain, the Whole science-for-government movement might catch on and do some good;”
The other columnist shook his head skeptically. “You place more faith in Jim Stark’s idealism than I do. Every time I scratch his surface to see what’s underneath I find he’s either driving for more political power or more wealth. My guess is that he’s got some private interest in this science meeting other than Louise Wilmott. Take a look at his career.
The scene shifted. Bob was slightly disconcerted by their having caught this particular bit of gossip. But Louise only clutched his arm more tightly.
“Whatever the truth may be,” she said, “I’m not afraid to hear it.”
In the next few minutes they crossed the continent for fragments of political speeches and radio addresses that were making news throughout the nation. Frequent were the references to the scientific conference at her own estate. America’s alert leaders were expecting great things.
Then the river of magic brought them back to the shore of the lake, and through the misty colored light Louise seemed to be looking at her own brightly lighted mansion. She noticed, then, that there was someone sitting in an automobile to the west of the house. On the instant her will commanded an answer to her curiosity. She and Bob seemed to be at the very window of the car.
“It’s James Stark,” Louise whispered. “He’s talking into an instrument.
I thought we left him at the chess game.”
“This game has him guessing, too, evidently,” said Bob. “He seems to be unable to contact any of his staff.”
“He has never told me about any such staff,” said Louise. “Why should he be using a short-wave set?”
“When one lives within the river of magic he finds mysteries everywhere. But most of them can be understood if he has the patience to follow them. That, incidentally, has been the chief source of my education. You see, this river is my home.”
“I don’t understand,” said Louise.
“I live here. I go and come by way of this invisible river. It supplies me with my food and clothing and shelter and education.”
“But your real home—”
“This is it,” said Bob. “I wandered into this ravine when I was only a small child. Somehow I was so much fascinated by what I found here that I couldn’t go back. I was happy here. I watched the wonderful events of the outside world as one might watch a continuous show. Time meant nothing to me until I grew older. I never knew my age. Gradually the world from which I learned fascinated me more and more until I began to venture forth into it occasionally.”
“Didn’t you ever tell your parents of your fate?”
“I was tempted to, when I knew that Death was about to claim them. But I thought better of it. For I had stayed in this realm from choice. It would have broken their hearts all over again to know. And after all, could anyone understand who has not seen for himself? This strange realm is my good fortune. You understand, don’t you?” Louise nodded. She was beginning to understand.
“It’s a world in which the workings of Nature’s own powers are bent to a man’s will,” he went on. “But not to any man’s will. There were a few other persons—gardeners from your estate—who strayed into the edges of this existence. But they were not in harmony with it somehow. They could not see what you have seen.”
“And so they returned?”
“No, they didn’t survive the ordeal. The luckless fellows simply vanished.”
“You’ve been favored by the gods,” said Louise, smiling with admiration.
“In all ways except one,” said Bob Porter. His voice dropped to that low, even tone like an echo out of a deep well. It reminded her of their first meeting in the garden, when he was not Robert Porter, the famous political orator, but a lonely phantom in silks and jewels looking up at the stars. “The gods have not given me a woman to be my wife. That is something I must win for myself Louise—”
“Yes, Bob?”
“What color is the river to your eyes now? Is it still the stars in a night sky?”
“Much brighter than that,” said Louise. “The tiny stars are everywhere. They’re dazzling like gold.”
“I love you, Louise. I want you to marry me, to live in this world with me, to share its wonders. Will you, Louise?”
CHAPTER X
Insanity!
And then what happened?” Brenda asked, quizzing Louise the following morning concerning her night’s adventures.
Only for Brenda’s sake was Louise willing to recount the details of her strange excursion. She would have spoken more freely if Dr. Marcus hadn’t been listening too intently.
But as the excitement of the experience returned to her she spoke with a glow of enthusiasm. There was no use trying to hide any of the facts. This was no dream. It had happened to her, and no world tourist could be any more delighted over a sight-seeing tour than she was.
She overlooked Brenda’s suspicion that the man in the mask was the skylight thief. Brenda would be reasonable when she understood.
Far more serious, Louise discounted Dr. Marcus’ attention to investigate her sanity. She did not realize that this morning he was more intent than ever upon this purpose, owing to the fact that he had been encouraged along these lines by Senator Stark himself.
As Louise recounted her swift leaps through space—from one coast to another with the snap of her fingers—every words of her strange confession registered in Dr. Marcus’ mental notes. He rubbed his hands exultantly. The psychiatric board would make short work of her when they heard these things—and he would see that she became his most expensive case.
“Then he asked me to marry him,” said Louise in conclusion, “to share his world.”
“Oh, Louise! This is dreadful!” Brenda exclaimed. “How can you seem so happy over it? Have you forgotten that he proved himself a thief?”
“He’s nothing of the kind, Brenda. He’s the finest man in the world.”
“So you accepted?”
“No,” said Louise, “because right then was when I heard your voice, Brenda. You were calling me from a hundred miles away, it seemed. I answered you, and then the spell was broken.”
“Thank goodness!” Brenda sighed. “You gave me the fright of my life, child, standing right there on the bank of the ravine.”
“But Bob was with me.”
“More imagination,” Brenda said. “You were all alone when I saw you. Don’t you know that’s a dangerous place? A little three-year-old-child—”
“You’ve told me that one before, Brenda,” Louise said. “That all happened more than twenty years ago.”
“M-m-m.”
Brenda tapped her fingers over her wrinkled forehead thoughtfully. “Why, so it did. How did you know?”
“Because Bob Porter is that child,” said Louise. “He grew up as a child of the invisible river.”
Dr. Marcus suddenly leaped up, slapping his hand on the table. “That does it. I’ll have to report her at once.” He called, “Senator Stark Oh, here you are.”
The handsome young senator came in and sat beside Louise. He took her hand.
“There, now,” he said. “Whatever comes, I’ll stand by you. But there’s still a chance, you realize.”
“A chance for what?” Louise asked innocently.
“To keep yourself out of an institution,” said Stark. “If you’d just be sensible and banish all these strange thoughts from your mind, you’d come back to normal in a short time.”
Dr. Marcus didn’t care for such glib optimism. “Her condition is far more serious than you realize. In fact—”
A short snarl from the senator cut Dr. Marcus to cold silence.
Then the senator led Louise out on the porch where they could talk in private.
“You’re going to marry me, Louise,” he said. “That will settle everything. As soon as you forget Porter and his mystic notions, you’ll be on the road to recovery. You’re mentally ill, dear.”
“I’m not ill, thank you,” Louise said angrily. “And I’m going to marry Bob Porter!”
“You’re intoxicated with fluffy visions. I’ve never seen you like this.” Louise knew from his talk that he was burning up with jealousy toward Bob. But there was something else feeding the fires of his mind, too. Louise recalled the hint of one of the Washington commentators—that James Stark had probably come here on the trail of a chance for more wealth.
Could it be that, even as he denied the existence of this invisible river he was plotting to make money out of it?
Could this staff he had tried to call together by radio be a group of political assistants? Or were they the gunmen who had tried to forestall the scientific conference?
Suddenly Louise was seeing it all clearly. The invisible river was the discovery that Professor White had been theorizing upon. Through one of the many gardeners who came and went, the news had leaked out and fallen into Stark’s hands. To him the rumor had the smell of a financial opportunity.
Naturally, then, he would want the whole matter kept hidden from the public eye until he had sounded it for profits. Was it something to which hundreds of thousands of people might throng? Quick millions might be in the offing.
As Louise was piecing together the jigsaw of possibilities, Stark asked her a question that clinched her suspicions.
“You’re going to forget that bad dream, marry me, and recover from your delusions,” he repeated. “But while this nightmare is still fresh in your mind, do you recall whether it came over you easily—”
“It was not a nightmare.”
“Suppose we say it was real,” said Stark, pretending indulgence. “Do you imagine that the average person could enter the same experience as readily as you did, and see the same sights, and jump through space?”
Louise faced him defiantly. “If you doubt the reality of it, why do you ask? Surely you aren’t planning to charge other people an admission fee to enter my private dream!”
James Stark reddened. Testily he said, “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Louise. Dr. Marcus is right.”
“Indeed!” She turned on him and her eyes were blazing fire. “Just how much did you have to pay to make sure he’d know all the answers.”
Stark’s face changed to magenta. He glanced to one side to discover the round little doctor. Marcus was running a temperature, too, judging by the way he was swabbing his double chins with a handkerchief.
“Louise, don’t be absurd!” Stark snapped, “What right have you to say—”
“Plenty of right,” said Louise. “A radiogram reached me this morning from my faithful friend Darlene, who happens to be on her way to South America. What she had to say about bribes leaves you with exactly nothing to say, Mr. Stark!”
“Let me explain—”
“Explain it to your voters before the primary election.”
CHAPTER XI
Professor White’s Theory
Brenda said afterward, it was the proudest hour of Teddy White’s young life. He was a perfect embodiment of dignity. The pointed white beard and mustaches set him off beautifully.
All in all, he was so successful in the delivery of his mysterious theory that Brenda decided he was quite grown up at last. She resolved never to compare him with a billy-goat again.
Of course, she couldn’t understand what his theories were all about. But it was obvious that fifty scientists, including the few who were recovering from bullet wounds, were mightily interested.
It was a midday session. Louise and Senator Stark had come in late.
They had been out on the porch, having some sort of disagreement, and they didn’t look any too happy.
Bribery was the word for Senator Stark. Bribery! The message from Darlene Donovan left no room for doubt. Brenda had taken the liberty of reading the message before turning it over to Louise, just to make sure it wasn’t a death or other bad news.
The contents had excited her so that she had also read it to practically everyone who came her way—the chauffeur, the gardeners, Teddy White, Janet the maid, and Dr. Marcus. Janet had fainted dead away. The doctor, on the other hand, had acted as if it were good news, and he had toddled off to find the senator at once.
Then, an hour or so later, both Dr. Marcus and Senator Stark were impressing Louise with the dangers of insanity.
But now it appeared that Louise was fighting for her rights and had not been bluffed into denying the truth of her strange excursion.
An invisible river! What a pretty thought! All these years, Brenda realized, she had been living within sight of it—or can one live within sight of something invisible?
As Louise had described it, it must be a vast, wide stream, not of water but of millions of tiny lights. It was ever so strange that it might be seen in greater brilliance as Louise became more accustomed to it. But stranger still that most people could not see it at all. Brenda wondered.
What a powerful thing it must be!
Now Teddy White must be talking about the very same thing. Yes, that was it—a stream of power like a river—a phenomenon of Nature. (How Teddy could roll off those big words!) But he didn’t describe, it in terms of color, as Louise had done. In fact, he admitted it was nothing he had ever been able to see.
But the papers he read from were fairly bristling with the strange effects of this discovery.
“These data,” he was saying, “suggest the theory that the prevalence of such phenomena have been contributory factors to the processes of evolution.”
This must have been a terribly exciting statement to make, judging by the wonderment in the faces of the scientists.
“If such invisible rivers served all of life down through the ages, it may be believed that they sped up the wheels of natural selection; that they encouraged natural adaptions of life to climate and symbiotic relationships of life to life.”
Brenda whispered. “Is that good?” and Louise smiled and nodded.
“In time,” Teddy White went on, “we may find more complete evidence that these invisible currents of natural adjustments were never stationary, but have moved, as air currents move, but very slowly, across the continents. This, again, is purely hypothetical. The past twenty-five years have netted no satisfactory data in this. connection. But by all odds the most striking observation.
At this point Senator Stark was observed making his exit.
This inspired Teddy White to call for a general shift in tactics. After all, his most striking observation could be demonstrated more effectively than it could be told.
Fifteen minutes later everyone was in the garden. The assembly was called to order around the chess table. Then before all amazed eyes, scientific and otherwise, the chess-men performed. James Stark was there, looking very uncomfortable.
“Where’s Dr. Marcus?” Brenda said under her breath. “Who does he want to put in the nut-house now?”
Teddy White spoke his observations while the men watched in silence. He set forth no dogmatic conclusions on these matters, but his questions were highly stimulating! Wouldn’t it be a tremendous development if these invisible streams of power, at work in man’s world every minute of every hour, could gradually bring about a new dynamic relationship between inanimate things and man’s will?
