“Nope—except for queer bird foot-marks where that thing landed near the French window. Nothing else.”
“The things came from the moon; I’ll swear to it,” I muttered. “They must be able to cross space somehow. I figured there might be somebody on the grounds directing them or something. We’ll keep on looking, anyway.”
“Okay. Maybe you’ve got something there.”
But it did not seem that I had. We wandered around for half an hour or more, flashing our torches at intervals. The estate covered a pretty wide area of ground, and it took us a considerable time to zigzag about. It was as we were slowly returning toward the house that Lewis caught my arm tightly. Immediately we all became still.
Through the thick undergrowth we could see a dim figure crouching down in a more open part of the grounds. The waning moonlight was quite inadequate to reveal him clearly—if it was a he. It had no shape, so heavily was it muffled up. The figure seemed to be on its knees, burrowing steadily into the earth, and using a torch very cautiously at intervals.
“On him!” rapped out Lewis suddenly—and we plunged forward.
But something happened. The unknown jumped up, whirled around, and fired something that sent a fine spray toward us. I caught a glimpse of the figure’s face—long, thin, pallid. Then it seemed as though the earth closed in on me from every side…
CHAPTER II
The Riddle Deepens
The next thing I knew, somebody was chafing my wrists. I stared dazedly upward in the reflected light of a torch, to see Lucy’s anxious face bending over mine. Behind her, less distinct, were Lewis and his men.
“Lucy!” I cried. “How did you get here? Ouch, my head!”
I got up dizzily, running my eye over her. She was fully dressed now, or appeared to be. Anyway, she had bundled on her fur coat, scarf and little hat.
Lewis said rather grimly, “She revived us, too.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked her shortly. “I thought I left you in your room.”
“Sure you did—two and a half hours ago! I got worried at the lapse of time. I came to look for you, found you and these men out cold, so I rushed in the house to get some brandy and revive you.”
I looked at her steadily. I had noticed something peculiar. The flashlight shining into her face had failed to make the pupils of her eyes contract. They were wide, gaping pools of black, with a tiny little rim of blue around them.
“What are you staring at, Curt?” she asked suddenly.
“Your eyes. Looks as though you’re—drugged.”
“Oh, that! I took some sleeping tablets to settle my nerves, but they didn’t seem to have much effect—especially when I was worrying about you. But Curt, never mind me! What happened to you, and these men?”
“We were attacked, and somebody has got a mighty powerful scientific weapon with which to defend himself. It ejects a paralyzing fluid. It put us out like lights—” I gestured suddenly. “Let’s get inside. We can do no more out here until daylight. You boys sticking around out here?” I asked them.
“Yeah,” Lewis retorted. “Maybe we’ll find out what that guy was digging for.”
Lucy looked vaguely surprised at this last remark, but i caught her arm and led her into the house, back to the bedroom again. First thing I did was check up on the box containing the sleeping tablets. There were two short certainly. I distinctly remembered’ there had been half a dozen, because I’d intended buying more. Now there were only four.
“Curt, don’t you believe me?” Lucy asked quietly, watching me.
I turned to her sharply. She had pulled off her fur coat now, to reveal that she was still in her rent and torn night clothing.
“It’s getting so that I don’t know whom to believe!” I retorted. “I’ve no reason to doubt you—yet I felt I ought to check up. Beats me why two tablets of this strength haven’t even made you sleepy!”
“They have—now,” she said wearily throwing herself on the bed. “My fears for you kept me awake before— Curt! Curt, dearest!”
She gripped my arm and pulled me down to a sitting position on the bed.
“Please don’t keep looking at me like this, as though—as though you think I have something to do with all this. It’s as bad for me as it is for you. Just what are you thinking?”
“Just that whoever it was on the grounds is probably the murderer of your father,” I replied slowly.
Lucy looked at me steadily for a moment, then she gave a little sigh and relaxed. Her eyelids drooped, and in a moment she dropped into slumber.
Of course sleep is the easiest thing in the world to imitate, and had she wanted— Damn my suspicions! I got up, cursed myself for ever daring to suspect her at all.
I did not go back to bed. I finished dressing and spent the rest of the time until daylight seated in a chair, smoking and thinking.
* * * *
I could see from Lucy’s expression at breakfast that she resented my suspicions of the night, so I said little that would recall that matter to her mind.
Toward mid-morning we got a diversion, for Inspector Davison returned with a florid-faced, white-haired individual in immaculate attire, whom he introduced as Dr. Henry Stanson, an eminent botanist.
“Took me some time to locate the doctor,” the inspector explained. “We’ll go right down to the laboratory, if you don’t mind.”
I followed them leisurely, with Lucy looking after me rather wonderingly. In the lab I found Stanson on his knees, peering at the plants. Finally he yanked one out, jabbed a needle in the still moist root and extracted a quantity of sap. Getting up, he narrowed his eyes over globules of moisture that he tested in his portable equipment.
“What are they? New sort of dock leaves?” I asked interestedly.
The white head shook briefly. “This isn’t a plant that has grown on this world. It isn’t even a tropical one. In these days, they are all classified from pole to pole. This stuff”—he raised the glass phial—“is concentrated drug of some kind. A tremendously powerful sedative, I’d say. I guess bromides would be seltzer water by comparison.”
“Fatal?” Davison asked keenly.
Stanson mused. “Well, that depends. I can’t find out much from these few details. I’ll have to check over in my laboratory.”
“Inspector,” I said quietly, “would you object very much if I accompanied you and Dr. Stanson to his laboratory? I’d like to see what his tests reveal.”
He looked surprised. “Why no, there’s nothing against that. You evidently don’t think your wife will be in further danger, then? From flying monsters?” he asked grimly.
“Oh; so you know about them?” I demanded.
“My men told me everything when I arrived. Most interestíng sidelight. However, I think there is little chance of any danger during the daytime. We’ll be getting along to the car. Join us when you’re ready.”
I hurried back to Lucy. She gave me a rather chilly glance.
“I’ve got to go back to the city with the inspector,” I said briefly. “Just some routine questioning, you know. I’ll be back later.”
She got to her feet. “Curt, are you sure that is the reason you are going?”
“Eh? But of course—”
“Or is it to build up some filthy suspicion against me?” she blazed. “Do you think I’m blind, that I can’t see you suspect me of some rotten intrigue somewhere? You take the simplest little thing and twist it into a guilty motive to—”
“Lucy!” I caught her tightly. “Lucy, I never said anything yet to make you blow up like that! It’s your own conscience that’s doing it, not anything I’ve done! I’m simply following every lead I can to clear up this mess. Please understand that!”
“Then it’s not questioning you’re going for?”
“No,” I admitted quietly. “I’m going to get an analysis of those laboratory weeds… See you later.”
I left her with that, sat in morose silence between Stanson, and the inspector
as we drove into town. Matter of fact, the thing that had propelled me on this errand had been the botanist’s reference to drugs. I was still haunted by the memory of Lucy’s eyes the previous night. And she was hiding something: her latest uncalled-for outburst made me reasonably sure of it. Pretty damnable business, to have to suspect one’s own wife!
* * * *
We lunched and then went to Stanson’s private laboratory at the Botanical Institute. He took about two hours making all his experiments, testing the sap on a white mouse from the adjoining experimental annex. At the end of it all, the inspector and I were still interested, but puzzled.
“Well, Doctor, how are we fixed?” Davison asked, his eye on the clock.
Stanson sighed. “I’ve got as far as I can. This sap, if we could only get it in large quantities, would present the medical profession with a most useful addition. It is a drug, as I said before, and reacts strongly on the nervous system according to the amount given.
“In extreme amounts it could kill. In other varying amounts, it might produce effects ranging from complete insensibility to pain, to a complete control over the nervous system. As some drugs can either benefit or kill—adrenalin, for example—so can this one, according to quantity.”
“Insensibility to pain, eh?” the inspector mused. “That wouldn’t be an addition to medical science. We’ve got drugs already that do that.”
“I know—that is only one of the effects, as I pointed out. The real usefulness would come in its ability to control the nervous system. If this drug were injected in given quantity into the bloodstream, a man could, say, control his nerves so accurately as to make his hair stand on end, move his eyes independently of one another, perspire or shiver at will, change the color of his eye pigment, alter his heartbeats—why, there’s no end to what he could do.”
“Hm-m,” the inspector muttered. “This is possibly the secret which was stolen from Dr. Coratti when he was murdered. Also, it is possible that Corattí brought the weeds originally from the moon.”
“I’m sure he did,” I said. “And it is possible that criminals would like to know where they could get more of these weeds. They could start a racket in medicine unparalleled in history, besides the things they could do with them themselves. They might even be able to change their appearance after a dose of the drug.”
“Quite possible,” admitted Stanson.
I said no more, for an astounding thought had stolen across my brain. Lucy had been drugged. Sleeping tablets? Quite possibly; but just as possibly—weed extract.
We had been attacked on the grounds and Lucy had revived us, stressing worry as to my whereabouts as her reason for being in the grounds at all. The indeterminable figure burrowing in the soil? Shapeless fur coat? Could Lucy have had the time to leave the bedroom after I’d left her? Sure—we’d wandered around for an hour and a half. But why would she have left the bedroom? And was it she, anyway…
“Something struck you?”
The inspector’s voice broke my meditations. I looked at Stanson.
“Suppose,” I said, “these plants were normal and strong. They could not give off their sap without its being extracted, could they?”
“Certainly they could. Look at the needles on the leaves. They would sting in the style of a common nettle. There are two possible reasons why these plants died—one, because they failed to take root property; or else because so much sap was taken out of them by somebody. The latter theory seems the more likely.”
“Well, thanks a lot,” the inspector said finally. “We’ve got to be getting along. Send in your account to headquarters, will you, Doctor? You satisfied, Mr. Fowley?”
“I guess so,” I nodded. “Doesn’t seem we’ve gotten very far, though.”
I think I threw Inspector Davison off the scent there. I wanted to reason this out for myself, before getting Lucy in a possible jam. So I effected an air of bewilderment over the whole proceedings as Davison accompanied me in the car back to the Coratti estate. He saw me inside and then departed about his business.
I walked into the lounge, slapping the newspaper I’d bought in town carelessly against my leg. Lucy tossed down her book and eyed me levelly.
“Well, did they ask you many questions?”
“I found out about the plants, anyway,” I retorted. “They’re able to produce change in a human body. For instance, you or I could change into something else under the influence of their sap.”
“So that’s what you’re thinking!” she said bitterly. “You think I drugged myself with plant sap, eh? That’s what you thought last night, too! You believe it was I who attacked you in the grounds!”
“Perhaps you’ve some idea who else it could have been?” I demanded. “Think how all this looks to me! Why don’t you come out into the open and explain things before I find them out for myself?”
“I suppose,” she asked dryly, “I shot Beryl, too.”
“I know you didn’t. I saw other people do that— But you do know something!” I caught her shoulders, forced her to her feet. “You little fool, Lucy, can’t you remember for a minute that I’m your husband, that I’m willing to go through anything to help you if need be?”
Her lips set. “I don’t want your help, Curt—and I resent your beastly suspicions. Anyway, the whole thing’s idiotic. You’re trying to suggest that under the influence of drug I can change myself like—like a chameleon…”
“Maybe. The figure that attacked could have been you—and so could its face, for that matter.”
“Oh, you’re impossible!”
She swung away, flushing, and stood gazing out of the window at the man standing idly about the grounds. I hesitated, about to say something to her. Then I shrugged and snatched up the paper I’d brought, and glanced through it for the first time.
The headlines smote me immediately:
MYSTERY CRIME RING AT WORK
I read the column with a frown. Though it was possibly miles apart from the mystery in which I was involved, it had nevertheless a reminiscent scientific tang about it. At my silence Lucy turned, came over and read over my shoulder. She was interested enough to repeat the column in a low voice.
The rapid development of a new criminal organization is causing police much concern. There are distinct evidences of a racket being waged against big industrialists. By some curious process of an undoubtedly scientific nature, the criminal behind the activity is able to learn the innermost secrets of big industries, which he then sells to commercial rivals.
Such a system is bound in time to undermine several big firms whose names are household words in this country. As yet the authorities cannot understand how the criminal is able to learn secrets that are inside four walls, or how he is able to find out what takes place at secret board meetings. A new style of radio detection is suspected, but has yet to be proved.
“So,” I murmured, “we’re not the only folks with a mystery!”
My attempt to be genial was lost on Lucy. She read the column again to herself, compressed her lips.
“What’s the matter? Know something about it?” I asked her bluntly.
“Of course not. I was just thinking that the criminals who shot Beryl and who possibly murdered father might be behind this.”
“Those killers went off into space,” I reminded her briefly. “And a ship like that could not return to any part of Earth without being noticed.”
“But—why should they be the only criminals?” Lucy demanded. “The ones that shot Beryl may have been only a section of a larger gang. The other members are possibly the ones who are doing this scientific work of learning secrets; the ones who probably killed father.
“One of them might even have been the person who attacked you in the grounds last night. Remember, he had a paralyzing gun, you said. That proves he was at least a scientist.”
“Yeah—that’s right,” I admitted slowly. I pondered it for a moment, then I made up my mind.
“Lucy, it seems to me that we can
never know the truth about all this until we know why those crooks rushed off into space. It is pretty certain that they headed for the moon, and we can only know the answer by going to the moon ourselves!”
“We haven’t a space machine,” Lucy said quickly.
“We can have one. You said yourself there are duplicate plans in the lab.”
She looked startled for a moment. “Why yes, but— Well, how do you even propose to start? Think of the materials we’ll need.”
“Your dad managed it; so can we. We’re not short of money, and I think ít’s a good way to get things moving. We may stick here forever otherwise.”
I turned and strode for the door, but to my surprise Lucy caught my arm. The frozen coldness seemed to have gone out of her face. Instead she had become appealing, desperately appealing. It takes a lot of purpose to refuse a woman when they put on an act.
“Curt, I don’t think we should waste time and money doing this. It will take too long, and it can’t achieve any good purpose. Don’t forget the curse that flying to the moon brought to this house, and—”
“Lucy,” I said, “I am ordinarily a patient man. But right now, I crave action!”
I thrust her aside and strode across to the laboratory. The plans were there, sure enough, and the formula for the fuel; but I realized I was not engineer enough to understand them. All I could do was send them to an engineering firm and have them deliver the finished parts in sections. I rang up Inspector Davison and told him of my idea—that it would be better to go after the crooks than wait for them to turn up. He agreed and that was that.
That Lucy did not like any part of the idea I could see full well, though she did not refer to it again. In fact, it was her utter silence that showed me her displeasure so clearly. We sat like a couple of deaf mutes after dinner that evening.
But the voice of a newscaster snapped us to attention quick enough.
“Reports are coming in from various sections of the country about strange bird life which has appeared in both urban and rural districts.”
The teleplate revealed unmistakable shots of the giant monsters that had attacked Lucy the previous night.
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 16
