by Don Wilcox
Monty looked mad, and he was muttering something about a cheap publicity stunt; he was going to get out ahead of the cameras. Personally, I couldn’t see that Taggart and his turban stood to gain anything by what had happened. It certainly didn’t agree with temperaments like Constanza’s.
We followed them to the street entrance out of curiosity. Mr. Bondpopper was interested for more reasons than one. He and Monty Montzingo had a friendly bet that Monty couldn’t bring these two cowboy singers to the city and put them over with the Hall of Arts talent committee.
The tallest of the cowboys, the one they called Joe, was awkward about getting himself through the door. He was too busy gazing at the elevator girl, Betty Morris. In his confusion he bumped into me.
The other cowboy, the one they called Steve, apologized for Joe. He said, “Don’t mind my pal. He’s not used to the big city . . . Say, haven’t I seen you before?”
“No,” I said.
“I thought maybe you were one of my fans. Lots of pretty girls send me their pictures. Do you like cowboy music?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry.”
Then Monty called to Steve to come on. The three of them got to the street just in time to run into a batch of cameras and newsmen. It did look as if this turban-throwing had been a publicity scheme. If so, Constanza would make trouble over it. Taggart or whoever was guilty of putting pins in her bonnet would probably boil in oil.
Joe, it seemed, didn’t like all the bossing he was getting. They photographed him holding the turban, catching it, folding it into his coat, lifting it up to the light. But when they, tried to get him to put it on he went berserk and did things with his fists. He scattered cameras and newsmen all over the sidewalk.
The policemen marched him away, and the last I saw of him he was still in possession of the turban.
I turned to find that Mr. Bondpopper was hurrying off down the street all by himself. He had walked right off from his party without saying anything. I didn’t know what to think.
But just then he whirled around and started back.
“How absent-minded of me,” he said. “My business—er—where’s the rest of our crowd?”
“They went back in to finish the concert,” I said. “Don’t mind me. You go ahead.”
Mr. Bondpopper gave me a sharp, critical look, like a talent scout trying to decide if you’re dependable.
“Miss Wing, come with me. You’re level-headed and you’re quick, and I can trust you. I need someone to talk to. Are you game?”
“Remember,” I said, “I’m Mae Wing, a night-club singer, and you’re—you’re Mr. Bondpropper—I mean, popper.”
“Don’t start calling me popper,” he said, overlooking my confusion. “You’ve got plenty of nerve, girl, and where we’re going there may be danger. Are you game?”
“Lead on,” I said.
CHAPTER VII
Taggart’s Basement
Mr. Bondpopper and I went directly to the Taggart Building, just north of the Hall of Arts.
The elevator took us up to the twenty-second floor where Mr. Taggart has his suite of offices. There was a young man secretary on night duty handling telephone calls and stray visitors like us.
“Very sorry,” he said in a tone and accent that reminded you he might have been a Japanese. “Mr. Taggart is not in. May I take a message?”
Mr. Bondpopper presented his card. The young man frowned at it and I thought he turned a little pale.
“What did you want, Mr. Bondpopper?” he asked bluntly.
A hearty smile from Mr. Bondpopper failed to dispel this secretary’s uneasiness.
“Nothing at all pressing, as far as I’m concerned,” said Mr. Bondpopper. “I’ve been asked to donate ten thousand dollars to some worthy cause that originated with Mr. Taggart.”
“Oh!” The young man was much relieved. “Oh—you!”
Mr. Bondpopper’s manner stiffened. “Is there anything so strange about my giving ten thousand dollars to a worthy cause? Is it possible you haven’t heard of my charities?”
“I beg your pardon,” said the young man, and his accent again smacked of Japanese. “I’m sure Mr. Taggart will want to see you soon. The project concerns our newly created turban, does it not?”
“It does,” said Mr. Bondpopper.
“And have you seen a demonstration?”
“That’s why I’ve come,” said Mr. Bondpopper, presenting a letter. “You see, Mr. Taggart suggested I visit his laboratories.”
The young man considered. He would be on the switchboard until midnight and would be glad to call us if Mr. Taggart or one of his assistants came in before he closed up for the night.
Mr. Bondpopper left the phone number of a nearby restaurant. He paused to admire a painting on the wall—obviously a Japanese print, though the young man stubbornly denied it. While the two of them tried to make out the signature on the painting, I picked up two yellow cards from a stack on the desk.
On our way down I gave the elevator man a friendly smile and let him glance at the two yellow cards. “We’ll be back later,” I said.
The elevator man bowed deeply. “Any time, Miss.”
At the restaurant Mr. Bondpopper and I had a talk over our sandwiches and coffee. He did most of the talking, and I did most of the catching on.
“You’re a very clever little lady,” he said. “Those bright eyes of yours make me wish I were forty years younger—er—ahem! Let’s get down to brass tacks. That laboratory of Taggart’s—”
“You’ve never seen it?” I asked. “Never—and I’m amazed that this invitation came to me. What mysterious equipment he has installed no one knows. There’s reason to believe, however, that he carries on experiments for the manufacture of all sorts of new products.”
“How did you learn that?”
“Through Betty Morris, the elevator girl. By the way, what do you know about her?”
My answer was rather vague. I knew that Betty had come in from a small town downstate and that she was bright and energetic and was already giving excellent service as an elevator operator.
“Do you know that she considers you one of her very best friends?” Mr. Bondpopper asked.
“I’m happy to hear it,” I said. “I lent her some money one week. The poor kid was trying to bear the expenses of her family. There’s been a heavy burden of sickness and hard luck—”
“Do you know that she’s holding down two jobs—one at the Hall of Arts, the other with Taggart? That’s right. She goes off the elevator at ten at night and walks right over to the Taggart Building. From ten until four in the morning she works in that little Oriental gift shop that catches the night-club trade. Isn’t that amazing?”
“She’s very remarkable,” I agreed.
“But what does she have to do with Taggart’s laboratory?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Mr. Bondpopper. “If you’ll watch the clerks in that Oriental gift shop, you’ll see that they’re never idle. Between customers they’re always at work on something—sketches, carvings, maps, or—well, turban designing.”
“Oh!” I saw that Mr. Bondpopper was not his usual calm and jolly self; he was tremendously excited. “Then Betty Morris told you—”
“Yes,” he said. “She told me in strict confidence—for some reason she decided I was the one who should know—she told me that she was doing the experimental designs for this new turban. Taggart expects it to be sensational. For artists, musicians, orators, writers, inventors—for everyone with a talent this design, will be the most revolutionary discovery of the age.”
“How?”
“It’s a design that’s supposed to carry some peculiar power over your talents or special abilities—and that’s where Taggart’s request for ten thousand dollars comes in. He believes these turbans can be turned out in mass production so that every artist or musician who needs encouragement can have it.”
“Encouragement from a turban?”
“That’s the idea.”
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br /> “No!” I exclaimed. “How could that be possible?”
Mr. Bondpopper eyed me intently, and I felt that I had spoken too hastily. He evidently wanted to believe in this curiosity.
“How could it be possible, Miss Wing?” he asked slowly. “Have you heard of brain waves?”
“Brain waves?” I frowned. “I’m only a night-club singer, Mr. Bondpopper. All my waves are in my hair.”
“Don’t worry—you have brain waves. Everybody does. They’re electrical and they work right along with your thoughts. They can be detected by instruments and registered on oscillographs. Do you follow me?”
“I think so.”
“All right, now let me ask you, Miss Wing. How do we know that there might not be certain substances or colors or designs that stimulate these waves?”
“Are there?”
“I’m not prepared to say definitely. But I’m open-minded on the subject.” Mr. Bondpopper sketched wavy lines on the back of an envelope. “Somewhere I’ve read that light and heat and color are all waves of energy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Miss Wing, if we could discover the combination of delicate waves that would reinforce the energies of our brains?”
I answered with a little gasp of amazement. Mr. Bondpopper was deadly serious now. The visionary light in his eye was bright. I was beginning to understand.
The part I understood best was that his boundless generosity was running away with him. He was just the type. If he could make himself believe he had found a new way to encourage a lot of talented musicians and artists, he’d think nothing of spending ten thousand dollars.
Somehow the idea chilled me. I was afraid this mysterious Mr. Taggart was about to play him for a sucker. I tried to tell him so.
“You said we might encounter danger, Mr. Bondpopper,” I said. “If this proposition is on the level, why should there be any danger? Why should that office clerk on the twenty-second floor have acted so suspicious? Why—”
“It’s a secret formula,” said Mr. Bondpopper. “Just think—if it makes good, Taggart will have a monopoly on the most revolutionary product in the country.”
He went on with great enthusiasm, making such funny gestures I began to feel that the revolution was already on.
“Eventually everyone might wear this peculiar design. I don’t mean that your business man will wear turbans necessarily—not if he can get the same effect from a scarf or a necktie or a handkerchief. You see, don’t you—” I found myself nodding an affirmative to everything he said. Somewhere I’d heard that the wrong kind of wallpaper can set your nerves on edge. If that was so, maybe colors and textures and designs could be pretty important.
“You’re getting the idea, Miss Wing,” he said. “Now in your case this turban, once perfected, might save you a year of study. You see, the brain waves that go with your musical talent would be reinforced.”
“I hope it wouldn’t cause me to shriek the way Constanza did,” I said. “Or is her talent yelling instead of singing?”
Mr. Bondpopper sputtered without saying anything, and I thought he was going to lose his temper. Then he laughed.
“Maybe yelling is her talent,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder.”
No telephone call came to us from Taggart’s office. It was now after midnight, so we knew the twenty-second- story switchboard was closed for the night.
So we might have given up our venture and gone home. We very nearly did—and I often wonder how things would have turned out if—
But we were too deep in the spirit of adventure to let go so easily. And when I reminded Mr. Bondpopper that I did have the passes, which I had simply filched from the office on the twenty- second floor, he toyed with the idea that we might barge right in. We could take our chances on squaring things with Taggart.
“I’ll tell you what,” I suggested. “We can go over and talk with Betty Morris. She should be in the shop by now. Maybe she can tell us all we want to know.”
We went over and browsed through the Oriental Art Shop, but Betty wasn’t there. . . Later I was to learn that she was riding around these blocks with Taggart himself. In fact, he had sent her on a mission into the jail with a gun—a very daring exploit, even though the gun wasn’t loaded. She obeyed against her will, of course. She confronted the imprisoned cowboy, recovered the turban and returned to Taggart’s cax—after which the two of them continued to ride around while waiting for certain other events in Taggart’s frame-up to transpire.
But all of this was unknown to me while Mr. Bondpopper and I sauntered through the Oriental Art Shop.
“We won’t wait any longer,” Mr. Bondpopper said to me. “These clerks don’t know where she is, and they’re getting suspicious because we’re so insistent.”
Ten minutes later we passed through the huge steel doorway that bore the engraved copper plate, “Taggart Laboratories.”
This was a sub-basement, two flights below the street level. My first impression was, what immense rooms! The first laboratory chamber we entered must have extended west to the end of the block. And there were other rooms beyond.
At this time of night the few scientists to be seen were apparently too busy to pay any attention to us.
“Looks as though we have the run of the place,” said Mr. Bondpopper. “I do hope someone here can give us a demonstration.”
The elevator operator who had glanced at our passes had supplied us with long, white coats to wear over our evening clothes.
“Will you know your way around without a guide?” he had asked. But he had refused to leave his elevator to guide us. He assumed that we must have been here before or Mr. Taggart wouldn’t have given us passes. I began to feel pretty guilty over what I had done. And frightened, too.
But Mr. Bondpopper was so gay and funny that I tried to tell myself everything was all right. Still, I wondered if he was scared, too, and just putting on an act.
“Look at that big glass bowl of limeade,” he said.
“And there’s one of strawberry pop.” I laughed. “Or is it cherry?”
“Those are the biggest punch bowls I ever saw,” he said. “They make me thirsty.”
Then we both laughed, for neither of us knew anything about all these big crucibles or what they contained. And it gave us a queer feeling to wonder what might happen if we were foolish enough to drink any of the bright-colored liquids.
“They must be dyes,” I suggested.
“Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”
We walked down the long line of great mixing vats. There were automatic paddles and automatic dippers, and it was fascinating to watch the colors change when a dipper swung round and poured several gallons of a deeper blue into a tank of pale blue dye.
But just as we began to catch the idea of these dye mixers we bumped into something so strange we could hardly believe our eyes.
I made the discovery when I stepped up onto an elevated platform to look down into one of the dippers. As I turned I noticed the long steel trough that ran along the ceiling. From this height I could see that the top of the trough was covered with glass. Every few feet along this glass top there was a glass spout.
This all attracted my attention because of what the trough contained. It was carrying a stream of purple liquid and several thousands of tiny swimming bodies.
These little figures were kicking, jumping, squirming, diving, turning flipflops—behaving like all the world’s circus clowns being run through one narrow tunnel.
I cried out, half terrified. “People!”
Mr. Bondpopper kept staring at me, wondering what was the matter, and I kept pointing, too excited to say anything but “People, people!”
CHAPTER VIII
Samsons in Miniature
Mr. Bondpopper came up to look and very nearly fainted. He clutched his head and began to weave; I helped him down to the floor. He was in a cold sweat for a minute or two, but after I swabbed his forehead with a handkerchief he pulled himself together.
Two or t
hree of the laboratory workers had turned from their tables to stare at us.
“Better get ready to answer questions,” I whispered to Mr. Bondpopper. “I’ve got a feeling we’re trespassing on private property.”
In fact, I knew we were; for the past twenty minutes of roving around we had simply disregarded all no-trespassing signs.
Mr. Bondpopper took me by the arm and we were off again as if nothing had happened, and the laboratory workers ceased to pay any attention.
“It’s the most amazing thing I ever saw,” Mr. Bondpopper whispered. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Again we ascended the elevated walk that gave us a view of the steel trough overhead. Thousands of these little human jumping-jacks, did I say? Hundreds of thousands!
Where were they coming from? Where were they going? What were they?
Where did they get those little funny faces, those cunning hands, those perfect little human bodies? All of them wore neat-fitting tights of green or blue or orange that made them as shiny as bright metal toys.
They looked like toys, with their shocks of stringy yellow hair and their long curly arrow-pointed tails. Mr. Bondpopper tried to make himself believe they were toys. But that was impossible. They were much too active. They were marvellous little animals—little demons!
And acrobatic! They must have been tremendously strong for their size, considering the way they could hurl each other along down the glass-covered channel.
“That glass roof,” said Mr. Bondpopper, “keeps them from falling out. And those little glass chimneys scattered along seem to be ventilators. See, there’s a bunch of them stopping for a deep breath.”
The little cluster of creatures under the air-spout hesitated for only a moment. Then they were off like a football team bound for a touchdown, only with much less order. Some of them dived through the purple stream, others raced along the sides where the liquid in the curved trough was only knee deep. One of the last three of the group picked up the other two and threw them bodily. They sailed up close, to the glass ceiling and landed six or seven feet downstream, turned three or four flipflops and came up on the run.
