by Don Wilcox
But all this talk meant nothing to Dave Silbert.
Before his eyes was the long, frail, slightly stooped figure of a man hanging from the scaffold. Talkative women were looking at that figure, commenting on the white mask bn the face or the limp white artist’s smock that still clung to the shoulders.
But none of this aroused any feelings in David Silbert; He walked on to the factory and took his place at his machines. He had, become a “worm.”
CHAPTER VII
The Guinea Pig Has Ideas
Dave had the vaguest notion that the Underground was worried about him. He attended the meetings with Happy, and more often than not he found himself being wakened out of a dreamless sleep and told that it was time to go home.
He hardly remembered what the meetings were about. He sensed that everyone was worried and agitated, but he didn’t see why.
Much of their agitation, was about him. They liked him. Most of them had advised him weeks before,-to get out of the factory, before its tragedy descended on him. Vaguely he remembered that he had refused to quit, that he had stayed at his machine with a dogged determination to learn for himself what this ugly curse was like.
And then, with the strange disappearance of John Dennison, he had made them know that he would take Dennison’s place. He would be the guinea pig. They must go on with their experiments. He had nothing to lose.
When had Dennison disappeared? Dave couldn’t remember. But it was true that Dennison’s machine had been left idle at the factory for several days.
The lady foreman had talked of having Dave take it over. He didn’t care. Nothing made any difference.
That’s how it was when he walked home from the Underground meetings. Sometimes Eudora would walk with him. He didn’t care whether she did or not. She would keep asking him questions about how he felt and what he knew.
“I know, that I’m here,” he would say. “Is there anything else I ought to know?”
“Are you taking the powders with your food?” she would ask.
“I forgot again today,” he might say. “Maybe I’ll remember tomorrow.” They seemed terribly anxious about him, and they were troubled when he didn’t carry out his guinea-pig directions. John Dennison’s disappearance had left them in an awful hole.
Then there came a day, less than two weeks after the handsome lady foreman had shifted him to John Dennison’s machine, that he began to feel a change.
Eudora came over to visit with him on the Maddox porch steps, and when her hand touched his, he felt an old familiar gladness to be with heir.
“Where have you been all this time?” he asked.
“Are you being funny? I’ve seen you almost every day, Dave! You’re giving me that same look you gave me that first time I saw you.”
“By George, I’m feeling different.
Gee, I’d forgotten how beautiful you were. Tell me, Eudora, what happened to John Dennison?”
“Nobody knows, Dave. We’ve searched everywhere.”
“Do you think I’m going through the same thing he went through?”
“The very same cycle. I’m sure. It may be the medicines. It may be something else. If we can find out for sure, think what it will mean! We’ll be able to free all of those three thousand workers! What do you think that would do to the Empress and her hateful government?”
Dave wasn’t used to thinking. Worms didn’t think. But now that thoughts were coming back to him, he was burning with a hundred curiosities at once.
“If I go through the same cycle as John Dennison, does that mean I’ll disappear, too?”
“What a frightful thought!” Eudora’s face reflected a deep worry at this suggestion. But already Dave was turning to other novel thoughts.
“Eudora, what is the truth about these couples who get the Empress’ permission to go back to the United States?”
“No one knows, why?”
“Come with me,” Dave said. “I’ve a scheme for finding out.”
He took her hand and they strolled along the sidewalk. She waited for him to talk. For a moment he paused, gazing at the gold statue where one night they had kissed.
“I remember that statue,” he said, catching her smile. Then, “Speaking of the Empress and the couples she sends—er—ah—you wouldn’t be falling in love?”
It was a very blunt question, and Eudora came back at him with a very business-like answer. “I’m afraid not. You see, I’ve become a voter. My arguments may carry some weight in meetings—until I myself fall in love.” Dave nodded. “Just what I expected. Okay, you and I are in the same boat. I am—believe it or not—a woman hater.”
He disregarded the faint smile at the corner of her lips.
“Consequently,” he concluded, “you and I are the ideal couple to try my plan. We’re both immune to love—so—come on! ”
“Where are you going?”
“To see the Empress. We’re going to put on an act and carry on a personal investigation.”
CHAPTER VIII
The Empress Defied
The Empress was wearing a gold dress covered with black glass beads. She was preoccupied with directing a battery of stenographers, and Dave guessed that she might be trying to locate a new sculptor.
She turned her hawk-like glare on Eudora and said, “You’re that trouble maker. Well?” Then she saw Dave. “Oh—you!” For a split second her brutal manner fled. She put her finger to the wart on her nose—perhaps a feminine impulse to hide her ugliness in the presence of a handsome young man.
But with a regal toss of her head she was restored to her normal, cruel self.
“Sit down,” she said. Then she swaggered back and forth in front of them. The glass beads on her dress clinked. Epaulets of wooden beads flopped at her shoulders when she whirled about. “You don’t have to tell me what you came for. I can guess.”
“We want to leave this island, your Majesty,” Eudora said. “We want to get married. We came to ask you for safe passage—”
“You’re too late. Who told you the boat was leaving tonight?” the Empress snapped.
Dave almost jumped out of his chair. Tonight? He and Eudora hadn’t known that. This bluff might go farther than they had intended.
But Eudora, with her usual calmness, gave no sign of surprise. Only a slight pressure from her elbow told him that she, too, was thinking fast.
“Isn’t it true that you sometimes grant this favor?” she was saying to the Empress. “How could we earn it?” This question led the way to others. With the skill of a diplomat, Eudora tried to probe the mysteries of brides and grooms. The Empress parried. She dodged questions. Her anger mounted.
Meanwhile, Dave studied the bit of mirrored seacoast, reflected to him from the glass of an open north window. The evening twilight deepened over the leaden blue expanse of water. The Empress’ boat, a small white freighter with accommodations for a few passengers, was already slowly moving out of the narrow bay. Nearer at hand, a motored launch was tying up at the inlet just beyond the inner palace garden. It had just returned, Dave knew, from taking a last load of passengers or mail to the departing S.S. Regalope.
Did he and Eudora dare carry their bold hoax far enough to get aboard? The answers they sought might be found on that boat. If ‘safe passages’ for lovers were a death trap, someone on that ship could be made to tell.
The Empress turned to Dave. “So you’re, the young whippersnapper I’ve been hearing about. You drift ashore like a lost fish. What are you, a spy? Or a newspaper man? You’ve got quite a habit of sticking your nose in other people’s business. I should have had you jailed when they first reported you.”
“If you’ll give Eudora and me safe passage, I’ll never come back to bother you any more,” Dave said, meeting her searching eyes.
“Hmm. That’s a pretty promise.” The Empress raised her vulture eyebrows as if saying to herself, “Indeed you won’t come back.”
She turned to one of her secretaries. “Bring me the records of D
avid Silbert, factory worker.”
While her head was turned, Dave whispered to Eudora. “Look at the window. The boat. If Happy and
Jane had known it was leaving tonight—”
There was no time to say more. The Empress turned, on Dave and confronted him with his case history.
“Who do you think you are, you young sea tramp? What do you mean, coming to this island and corrupting our high ideals?”
Dave blinked. Did she know he had joined the Underground? “How have I corrupted any ideals?”
“By falling in love with this girl,” said the Empress.
Dave folded his arms like a sphinx. “My dear Empress, ever since time began—”
“You’ll address me as ‘Your Majesty’ !”
“Your Majesty!” Dave was angering, and the slight nudge from Eudora didn’t restrain him. “Your Majesty, ever since time began, and women have been falling in love—”
“Love!” the Empress snarled. “There’s no such thing as love. It’s a word. A myth. It doesn’t mean a thing. It’s a trick to make men the masters of women. But I’ve done away with all that. I’ve proved that love is as dead as—as that man I hanged from the scaffold.”
Dave took advantage of this furious outburst. He changed his tactics. Assuming an easy smile, stroking his chin slowly, he said. “Your majesty, it’s too bad that your marriage turned out to be a disappointment. If the right man had only come your way—”
“Silence!” The Empress fairly shrieked. Her vulture face turned purplish white with rage.
The four armed policewomen who stood guard at the entrance of this room looked to the Empress for their cue. Dave knew his insult must have struck hard. Would he be thrown into prison at once?
The Empress, regaining her. composure, again consulted his work record.
“This card indicates that you have been working in the factory several weeks,” she said.
“Ever since I came.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Why wasn’t he a stupid worm like the others? Something was wrong here. He wasn’t responding to treatment.
She said, “I don’t understand a factory worker’s behaving the way you do. I’ve had several reports from the superintendent that you’re not falling into line like the others.”
“Maybe I overcame your doped food,” he said defiantly. “Maybe the others will overcome it too.”
“Doped food! Do you think that’s what makes those workers worms? Is that your best guess?” She gave him a mocking laugh.
He played his bluff blind. “Maybe I got confidential with the superintendent. Maybe she told me it was the food.”
The Empress burst out with a sarcastic laugh. “The superintendent doesn’t even know! I know! My scientific staff knows. But no one else. And so, Mr. Silbert—”
The Empress was speaking through clenched teeth. Her cheeks were twitching, her eyes were white-hot coals.
“And so, if you haven’t gone dopey, I know exactly what’s wrong. The same is true of John Dennison. If he came out of it, I know—”
Eudora rose, defiant, pleading.
“Where is John Dennison? What do you know about him? Please, Your Majesty—”
“Begging me, aren’t you!” Sophia Regalope’s evil laugh betrayed her sadistic pleasure.
Here, Dave realized, was her reason for making herself, an Empress. She thirsted for power. She gloated to see people in agony. Not only men, but lovely women, like Eudora. Then it dawned on him that this wily Empress was seeing through his and Eudora’s scheme. She was twisting it into an advantage to herself.
“Call Miss Blanchard,” she snapped to one of her secretaries.
“But Miss Blanchard went with the boat to carry out your orders.”
“Of course she did. Radio her instantly. Have her STOP the boat. I have two more passengers.” Then, to another secretary, “Make out passages for Eudora and Mr. Silbert. They’re leaving at once—to be married.” Dave saw the, quick terror in Eudora’s eyes. This bluff had gone far enough for her. She whispered, “No, Dave. Tell her not this boat. The next one—”
“Stay with me,” he whispered.
Then he strode to the window, looked out at the S.S. Regalope, a half mile beyond the bay. Already the order of the Empress had reached it. It began to churn water, circling around.
The Empress snapped her fingers and the four policewomen advanced. She gave them crisp orders.
“Take charge of Eudora and Mr. Silbert while I make note of their crimes.” She turned to the secretaries. “Take this official document for your files.” Two pairs of handcuffs clicked. “What a deadly thing chivalry is,” Dave thought to himself. If these officers hadn’t been women, his fists might have been useful. As it was, they had him.
Poor Eudora. Handcuffs were never meant for such a gentle, beautiful girl. The sadness in her dark eyes hurt him. He had worked her into this mess.
The four policewomen reminded Dave of four ferocious bulldogs in black and gold uniform. They knew how to flourish their pistols. He remembered how the sculptor’s, friends had looked, riddled with bullets, lying face down in the water. At his shoulder, Eudora was trembling.
“What’ll she do with us, Dave?”
“She thinks she’ll get rid of us by our own gag. Listen.”
The Empress dictated as fast as she could talk. The typewriters hummed.
“. . . to keep the record straight,” she was saying, “so that no court trial will be necessary I cite these many evidences of their criminally dangerous attitudes: Public insults against the statues a defense of the sculptor’s treason . . . an appeal to me for a passage on the pretext of an intention to marry, but the real purpose being to try to find out about the twenty couples who have been granted safe passage.
Eudora looked at Dave, and though she dared not speak, he knew what she was thinking. Their hoax was exploded. They had no intention of running away to marry, and” the Empress knew it. They had only meant to use this ruse for an investigation.
But Dave’s jaw was set with solid determination. If there was still a chance to get aboard and question someone who might know the answers, he was going to do it!
“Stay with me, Eudora!” he whispered. “I’ll see that you get out of this.”’
The four policewomen marched them down to the launch at the cove beyond the palace court. Pistols flourished. The epaulets of wooden beads clicked with every turn of officers’ uniformed shoulders.
Dave sat close to Eudora in a side seat. The sky was darkening. The S.S. Regalope was a white blur, waiting across a half mile of purple waters.
At once Dave realized that Eudora was working at her handcuffs—but carefully! Was it possible that her slender hands would—
The launch, turning, struck a wave. A white spray showered over the side. At that instant, Eudora sprang up. She had a pistol in her hand.
“Don’t touch your guns,” she cried. I’ll shoot to kill.”
The uniformed women who had sat next to her didn’t have a gun. Eudora had taken it in one quick grab.
But the officer on the other side of Dave made a swift reach.
Crack! Gunfire blazed from Eudora’s small hand. A tuft of black cloth jumped from the officer’s shoulder, and her beaded epaulet clattered to the floor. She dropped her gun. She screamed.
“Throw your gun on the floor,” Eudora snapped at the third officer. Then to the one at the wheel, “All right, you too. There. Now, no false moves, or you’ll get it straight.”
The policewoman who had just lost one epaulet began to blubber. “You don’t dare shoot us. You don’t dare. They’ll hang you.”
But the officer at the wheel told her to shut up, and everyone was silent but Dave, who muttered that a person didn’t have to commit a murder to be hanged in these parts.
CHAPTER IX
The Ghost of the Sculptor
Eudora came near to fainting from her own boldness. She made one of the officers remove Dave’s handcuffs, then turned
the situation over to him.
“Get on that radio,” he ordered the woman at the wheel. “Get Miss Blanchard on board the ship. And no monkey business . . . Now, tell her the ship isn’t to wait. Those two passengers have been held back. Order of the Empress.”
The launch turned toward a beach on the fartherest point of the island. Within twenty-five yards of shore, Dave ordered the officers to get out and swim ashore.
“But none of-us can swim,” wailed the woman with the torn shoulder.
“We can walk ashore in this water,” one of the others growled. “These kids are being plenty decent to us, considering that we’ll hang them sooner or later.”
The four of them scrambled overboard with a splash. Dave throttled the launch for straight course through the darkness. That misty white blotch ahead was the Regalope, again moving away from land.
Eudora was close beside him. Her hand clung to his arm.
“Oh, Dave, what’s going to happen to us?”
“I’ve nothing to worry about with you along, the way you handle a gun,” he smiled.
“It all happened so quickly,” she said. “I didn’t know I was going to do it. I was trembling so that my hands just shook out of those handcuffs by themselves—and then that splash came . . .”
“You were wonderful.”
“I was so afraid they would shoot you before I could stop them.”
“Me? You were the one they’d have shot. Men are mere worms to them. But when a beautiful woman defies them—then and all they stand for—”
“We’re coming up to the ship, Dave. What are we going to do?”
“Get aboard without being seen, if its humanly possible.”
“But we won’t have much time—not if we’re going to get back to the island on our fuel supply—”
“We’ll have to work fast,” Dave declared. “Anything we can find out in twenty minutes is pure gold. By that time those women police will get to a telephone and the radios will start buzzing—”
