by Don Wilcox
“Where on earth,” Mr. Bondpopper gasped, “did Mr. Taggart ever get these? Did you ever see anything like them?”
“I don’t like it,” I said. “It’s not right.”
“What’s not right?”
“It’s inhumane.”
Mr. Bondpopper caught me by the hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
I can’t explain the gruesome feeling that came over me. As if I had just witnessed the world’s most dreadful evil. As if these cunning little animals were things of hate. As if their marvellous power was something to be feared. And yet I was attracted.
Mr. Bondpopper stopped me. He was looking up at the steel trough. “Where do they go? There’s a sidetrack across to that shelf. Let’s take another look.”
It seemed that what we had seen was only the beginning. This shelf proved to be nothing less than an elevated floor of a wide room which these thousands of little demons used for a playground.
Again we had to ascend five or six steps to an elevated walk before we could get a view through the windows. The playground floor extended back thirty or forty feet. Eight or nine feet above it was a ceiling of steel with a corrugated surface, striped with indentations for indirect lights.
The space in this room was filled with huge stones and chunks of concrete, most of which were not at rest. They were bumping around. They were jerking and jumping and splitting in two, crowding along the walls and spinning around like tops.
They were undergoing these actions under the propulsion of the little green and blue and orange demons.
Now those little demons couldn’t have weighed more than a few ounces. According to Mr. Bondpopper, the stones must have weighed five or six hundred pounds. But these little creatures moved them as if they were toy balloons.
There must have been some layers of shock absorbing material under the floor; nevertheless, we could feel the jar through our feet, the same as you can feel a train or a street-car rumbling past.
“There’s one little fellow working all by himself,” said Mr. Bondpopper. “See, that little man over there under the pink light. He’s hacking away with an ax.”
“He thinks he can break it. I think he’s cut out a year’s work for himself.”
It was a stone about the size of a steamer trunk. The little demon was working around the perpendicular side, hanging on with his feet and the arrow point of his tail. As Mr. Bondpopper had observed, he was one of the masculine variety, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. As fast as he was working he must have thought he was capable of breaking that whole stone by himself.
Well, he did it. I didn’t know where he got his power or what sort of magic came to his assistance. I have since learned that it isn’t so much the force of the blow that makes a stone split as it is the crucial point at which the force is applied. This little fellow working under the pink light knew exactly what he was doing.
Amazingly, he was successful, and the top third of the big trunk-sized stone split off. As it shuddered with the telling blow he grabbed an edge in his hands and heaved. The stone tumbled as if it had been struck by a pile-driver. Where would it fall?
“Look!” I gasped. A catastrophe? A dozen or more little creatures were hopping around on the floor right in the path of the falling stone.
In that split second my sympathy for these little fellows leaped. But I needn’t have wasted any pity on them. They knew how to take care of themselves.
The air current must have warned them. They glanced up just in time to lift their arms and catch the weight. For an instant we could see their knees bend under the impact. Then up they came with a concerted spring. And up went the stone.
Straight up, and straight down upon them a second time!
With perfect co-operation they gave it another toss, this time far to one side. It must have landed on several other groups of little demons, for we could see it go on bouncing along over the floor, only a foot or two off the surface, until it fell through some hidden exit at the farther corner.
The muscular little fellow who had started this business stood on his perch under the pink light watching the fun. His hands were on his hips, the ax catching in the curve of his tail, and he was gazing across to the eat laughing for all he was worth.
Then he turned and seemed to be looking through the glass at us for a moment. But he didn’t pay any attention.
On we went. There were many streams of traffic over our heads a little farther fin. To our bewilderment some of these led into some of the huge vats where more dyes were being prepared. It was hardly conceivable that these funny little things would deliberately get themselves mixed up with dyes.
Or were they somehow employed to help with the mixing process?
These mysteries eluded us for the present. We couldn’t see into all these steel troughs. The ceiling of this north room was thick with them.
“Those men are watching us again,” Mr. Bondpopper whispered. “Let’s go.”
“They’re coming over to us,” I said. “What’ll they do if they decide we’re spies?”
“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Bondpopper, “that we shouldn’t have passed those no-trespassing signs,”
“I’m afraid, period.”
But just then something happened to spare us our conference with these laboratory workers. An electric bell sounded. They leaped like little green demons. You’d have thought it was a fire or an air-raid the way they hurried off to their stations.
One of them must have touched a button or pushed a lever or struck a match. I didn’t see it happen and neither did Mr. Bondpopper. But it was obvious that what happened had been well planned.
There was a sudden grinding and crunching of concrete away over in the northeast corner. The partitions kept us from seeing exactly what happened. My first thought was “Earthquake!” The building was falling in. There was a ripping and roaring of falling rocks and the dust came rolling out of the northeast corner room.
The laboratory workers were right on their toes, like a well trained team. Their leader held them back in a group for about fifteen seconds. Then he snapped his fingers and they all ran forward and acted as if they were in a panic.
The result of their waiting was that they were only three or four steps ahead of the officers who rushed in from the outside.
That was our chance to get out, we thought, for we had been forgotten the moment the electric bell rang.
The sounds, however, were suddenly fading. The rumble of the falling concrete had ceased, to be followed by the confused voices of people up on the street—and that was how we knew that a section of the sidewalk had fallen through. But those sounds, and the rush of feet down the steps, suddenly went away and we were in almost complete silence. Only the dull grinding of stones from the demons’ playground remained.
“Did you see what happened?” Mr. Bondpopper asked. “They’ve raised a glass partition between us and the other end of the room.”
“A glass partition?” I could see that he was right. A few steps ahead we encountered this almost invisible wall that cut us off from the scene of action.
We could see, but we couldn’t be seen. It took us several minutes to prove this to ourselves. As the traffic of officers and pedestrians filtered down to this basement level, we did our best to attract some attention, because we wanted to get out. But no one could see us.
We looked on impatiently-. Two or three persons had evidently been caught in the fall of concrete. Men in white came down with stretchers, and it was several minutes before they bore the last of the victims away.
“We’re locked in,” said Mr. Bondpopper nervously.
“We’ve just witnessed a deliberate crime,” I said.
Mr. Bondpopper nodded. “I don’t know what it’s all about, but they timed it to the second . . . Sooner or later they’re going to remember that we saw them answer that signal.”
“And where will we be?”
“Right behind this glass wall, if we don’t find an exit.”
/> “You mean they put this wall up just to catch us?”
“Well, hardly,” said Mr. Bondpopper. “This glass wall is their way of hiding their whole main laboratory from the public. Twenty-four twenty- fifths of this plant is closed off with us. There isn’t much left on the blind side of this one-way glass, is there? Not a single stream of those little human bugs.”
He was right. The officers and others who came down didn’t get a glimpse of this vast, mysterious laboratory.
We were prisoners, and the night was passing. It was up to us to find an exit, and we went back to work like little demons breaking rocks.
We should have sketched a map before we started. If we had put our ideas together, we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. I don’t mean to boast, but my sense of direction was undoubtedly better than Mr. Bondpopper’s.
You see, I knew that in our first tour of these mazes we had come all the way around a closed-in rectangle that was walled up from the floor to the ceiling and bigger than the biggest indoor swimming pool I ever saw.
Now I maintain that when you circumnavigate a path all the way around a rectangle of walls, you must be in a big rectangular room with a smaller rectangular room closed off inside it. If so, it’s not likely you’ll find your way out of the building by entering the inside room.
Of course, there could be hidden stairs or false doors, and I suppose that’s what Mr. Bondpopper thought when he drifted into the long, narrow tunnel of an entrance into this inner rectangle.
“Don’t come this way,” he called back to me.
“I’ll wait here,” I said, “but I think you’re on the wrong track.”
There was a brief silence, broken only by the sounds of his footsteps along a wet, slippery track. I couldn’t see him now. The tunnel was solid blackness.
“I’m sure you’re on the wrong track,” I called. “Don’t you remember, up at the other end of the laboratory we rounded a wall—”
“I think I’m on the wrong track,” Mr. Bondpopper called back. His voice sounded a mile away.
“Then come back,” I called.
“This floor’s coated with grease,” his voice came again, still farther away.
“Come back!”
I waited for several seconds. Then—
“Miss Wing! Are you still there?” The voice was miles and miles away. “This leads down . . . It might get us out.”
“Come back, you—you—come back!” Where did the fool think he was going? We didn’t have to break our necks to get out. We could wait until morning.
But Mr. Bondpopper must have been in a panic. Once more he called.
“Miss Wing . . . See if you can find another way . . . I’ll wait here by the blue light. If you find a way, call me.”
Blue light? Somehow that relieved me. If the inner room was lighted, he must not be in danger.
I took him at his word and went on in search of some other exit. Within five minutes I found a door at the end of an aisle between rows of tables. It was a narrow door; the lock was on my side. If I went through I might not find it easy to get back.
Carefully, silently, I opened it about half an inch and peeked through. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had found another room full of pixies.
No, what I saw was the street. This was the entrance of an Oriental jewelry shop. My door was one of the two narrow panels that flanked the door to the shop. Before my eyes was the display window with jewelry, and out beyond me was the street.
I took such a deep breath of the cool, fresh air it’s a wonder I didn’t attract the attention of the couple who were standing there by the window.
I couldn’t see their faces at first. I didn’t care to be seen, for my situation was very embarrassing, to say the least.
All I wanted was to get back to Mr. Bondpopper and tell him I’d found a way out. But for the moment I didn’t dare move.
And that was how I happened to hear the girl’s words and recognize her voice.
“Maybe Heptad didn’t see us,” she whispered. “Don’t look back.”
It was Betty Morris—yes, and one of the cowboy singers, Steve.
CHAPTER IX
Cowboy in Mid-Air
It did my eyes good to see something familiar; my head was still swimming with the weird things of the laboratory. The wonder is that I didn’t call out to Betty.
The fact is, something in her manner warned me there was trouble on her side of the door as well as mine.
“Hssh! That’s him—Pug Heptad,” Betty whispered, and I saw she was white with fright. “Put your arm around me and don’t let him see me.” Steve acted embarrassed. I trembled, for I was certainty seeing things. It appeared that Betty had a highly colored scarf—or was it Constanza’s turban—in the flap of her coat. The light caught it and as it flashed it somehow reminded me of all the colored dyes in the laboratory. And upon it was one of those tiny little human beings, flattening himself into the brilliant design.
I reeled. Was I being haunted with hallucinations? Was I to see these little creatures everywhere I looked?
Betty was watching the ugly, brutal- looking little man who had stopped a few feet away; but at the same time she was apparently aware that little creatures were playing around her coat collar.
Then there was a low-spoken conversation between this cruel-faced Heptad and someone he addressed as “Big Shot.” The light was right for me to see their expressions as they talked; but they were unaware at first that Betty and Steve were taking in their conversation.
I guessed the Big Shot to be no other than Taggart, for I had seen his picture in the papers. I was sure as soon as he said, “You were supposed to clear the way. But you caught three persons in that crash—”
“You didn’t give me time, boss,” Pug Heptad said. “You flashed the signal for right now . . . You put it over with the commissioner, didn’t you?”
A moment later these men discovered Betty and Steve; and a motion from one of them brought three thugs on the scene. Together they closed in on Betty and the cowboy.
This Big Shot proved to be Mr. Taggart himself. He began to use some pretty sarcastic talk on Betty, and it was plain that the cowboy wanted to swing at him. But Betty was playing cautious. Poor kid, my heart went out to her, because I could see she’d got herself into this mess just by trying to accommodate her employer.
This Mr. Taggart was a stocky, swaggering, egotistical guy who looked about as charming in his dress suit and high hat as a gorilla. He began thrusting hard remarks at Steve; he seemed to have the notion that both cowboys were in on the secrets of his turban game.
“So I may have to cut you in—both of you—if you know how to be sociable,” he said, and his tone was ominous.
“I’m one of the sociablest singers that ever strayed off the range,” Steve said, barely holding back with his fists. Betty was gripping his wrist to make sure he didn’t lose his temper. You could tell by his expression that he’d have taken his chances with the whole gang if it hadn’t been for her.
“Come get into my car,” Taggart snapped. He made Betty come, too, saying that he’d see to taking her to her bus.
And so, away they went, and there I stood looking through the crack in the doorway. I could already imagine the headline: COWBOY VICTIM OF GANG MURDER.
What could I do?
I had exactly one inspiration, and it would have been a good one, if!
That inspiration was to get back to Mr. Bondpopper and tell him what I’d seen. Of course, I might have gone straight to the police—with the likely result that I’d have got myself tangled up in red tape and got nowhere. But Mr. Bondpopper was a man of influence. Let him tip off the police and blow the lid off this whole hidden nestful of mysteries.
If only I could have found Mr. Bondpopper!
The long, black, tunnel-like entrance to the room that he had insisted on trying was about as friendly as a cellar full of ghosts. I kept edging deeper and deeper into it, calling his name, getting no answe
r.
“Are you there, Mr. Bondpopper? . . . Answer me . . . Misssterrrrr Bondpopperrrrrr! . . . Are you in there?”
The floor was coated with grease, as he had warned me. It was not a level floor, but sloping. I kept creeping a little farther, hoping for a glimpse of the blue light he had mentioned. Soon I could hardly keep my feet under me.
I called again, and when I got no answer I decided to go no farther, The odors of this dark passage were stifling; they reminded me of something I’d smelled elsewhere in the laboratory, which at the moment I couldn’t identify.
I dug the toes of my pumps into the crusty grease and hurried back to my starting point. I crossed to the partition of one-way glass to make sure it hadn’t lifted. The laboratory employees and a few other men were still rummaging around the corner room, leisurely piling some of the debris outside the door. Apparently their night’s work was over and they were well satisfied with it.
They didn’t come back into the big laboratory, and of course they couldn’t see me, so I made my way back to the little panel door and out into the street.
Where was I to find an officer?
No one seemed very eager to help me, and I could readily understand why. Everyone thought I was intoxicated. I was dizzy with fatigue, my evening dress was soiled, and the toes of my pumps were clogged with grease. I was carrying the white laboratory coat under my arm. After what I had been through I could scarcely talk straight.
“If you’re asking for a policeman,” someone on the street corner said to me, “there’s one right out there. But he looks kinda busy.”
I stared. Yes, there was an officer, and he was busy, all right—busy dodging his duty.
They had Steve!
It was that ugly Heptad with his three thugs, and between them they were having a tough time getting their cowboy under control. But just then Taggart hurried up to the scene, and whatever it was he said to the cop evidently made everything just ducky. And so the gang of them led Steve down the sidewalk as if he were an escapee from a hospital.
I watched them go. I saw the door they entered. I put the distances together in my mind and tried to visualize what part of the laboratory would be under that entrance. I was too dizzy to visualize anything. I went across the street to the restaurant where Mr. Bondpopper and I had been earlier in the evening. After a cup of hot coffee I began to get my nerve back.
