The Time Trap

by John Russell Fearn

  Dawlish began to advance slowly into the gloom; then he paused, peering at something round and white near the porthole. Bernice, immediately behind him, gave a cry of horror.

  “It’s a skull!” she gasped. “A skeleton seated at the desk!”

  Once the first shock was over it was discovered that there were two other skeletons as well, one on the floor and the other slumped on a chair in a corner. All trace of clothes had long since gone.

  “This ship’s been lost for a long time,” Nick commented. “We’d better come back in the daylight, Dawlish, and see what there is.”

  “Yes, sir—but in the meantime there is much we might learn from this logbook.”

  Dawlish picked it up from the desk, feeling dust thick upon it, and disturbing the hand of the skeleton in order to do it. Then he led the way out of the cabin and returned to the fresh air under the stars. Sobered, Nick, Bernice, and Betty followed him down the swinging ropes to the sand and they returned to their base camp. Here Lucy Brand had started a fire with her husband’s still operative lighter. Harley himself was lying on his wife’s fur coat, squirming and twisting, then relaxing for a while and gasping.

  “For God’s sake can’t you do something for me?” he demanded of Dawlish, noticing him in the firelight. “I’m dying!”

  “Once you have been sick, sir, you will make rapid recov­ery,” Dawlish assured him. “Cold comfort, I’m afraid, but then the conditions are extraordinary. You will be interested to know we found the steamer’s logbook.”

  “I’m not the least interested.”

  Dawlish shrugged and turned aside. He lay down near the fire and opened the logbook to study it. Around him, Betty, Bernice and Nick also stretched themselves.

  “The Mary Newton!” Dawlish exclaimed at last, when he had succeeded in deciphering the faded name written in ink on the logbook.

  “Never heard of it,” Nick said.

  “That isn’t surprising, sir, unless you happen to be a student of unusual phenomena, as I am. She is only one of dozens of missing ships on Lloyd’s list. She was last seen near the Cape of Good Hope in brilliant summer weather on the tenth March, 1930. She never reached port and was never heard of again—so she was added to ships like the Cyclops, the København, and others that have vanished without trace. She was bound for Rio to pick up a cargo of meat, but never accomplished her purpose.”

  “And there she lies,” Bernice muttered.

  Dawlish turned the pages of the logbook slowly and found most of the earlier entries illegible with age; but later ones were clearer. The last one was significant by reason of the wavering pen stroke at the finish....

  ‘Have tried all normal means of seamanship to determine our position, and failed. Distant coast­line is not positioned on our charts. Stars do not check with normal maps. The last of the water has gone. I fear an early disaster. Some of the crew have taken to the boats. How we got here I do not know and—”

  “They sailed into it, and we drove into it,” Betty said. “Which seems to prove you can get caught up just anywhere.”

  “Just as I said,” Dawlish responded. “And this bears out my earlier theory that we are in a plane very close to but not a part of our own space. If we’re lucky we might get out of it as simply as we came into it—but my belief is that we are faced with a lifetime here and must make the best of it. At least we can abandon the building of our bungalow. That ship will make a perfect home for us when we have tidied it up and removed the skeletons.”

  “There’s only one thing against that,” Nick said. “Using the ship as a home, I mean. Suppose one night when we’re asleep a storm and a big sea gets up? We’re liable to be carried away to heaven knows where!”

  “Would that matter so much?” Betty asked. “We haven’t the remotest idea where we are anyway.”

  “It would matter,” Nick answered, “because we might die on board if we didn’t reach land. Water and food would run out, whereas here it cannot. No, I prefer to stay on solid ground even if it is unfamiliar.”

  “I think, sir, you may be right,” Dawlish conceded. “Though the climate seems pretty equable, we cannot rely on it. At least we may find tools on that ship which will help us with our bungalow work. In the morning we can make a thorough search. In the meantime, may I ask a question?”

  “Shoot,” Nick invited.

  “You have shaved quite effectually. May I ask how?”

  Nick grinned and from his trouser pocket produced a sea shell, not unlike that of an oyster in shape, but much larger. The edge was serrated.

  “Sharp as glass,” he explained, handing it over. “It will even shave me without lather, though I don’t know how long the ‘blade’ will last. In any case there are thousands of them on the beach.”

  Dawlish tested the shell on his own beard and the effect was magical.

  “Thank you, sir.” He handed the shell back. “I shall lay in a supply for myself. Queer, but even here one feels the need to conform to civilized tradition—if one is clean-­shaven, that is.”

  “Well,” Nick, said, getting to his feet, “I think I’ll take a stroll before turning in. Coming, Berny?”

  He held down a hand to her and she rose up beside him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BERNICE DISAPPEARS

  It was peculiar how, in this plane, the night never seemed to become really dark, and the glow could not be entirely attributed to the moon.

  “Probably refraction of light waves,” Nick said, surprisingly, as Bernice brought up the matter.

  “Could be,” she agreed, and became silent for a while as the stroll continued. The immensity of the thing that had happened was such that the human mind could not adapt itself to it immediately. At the very outset of the adventure there had been the feeling that everything would work out right—that this was only a temporary diversion into some­thing abnormal—but now hope was dying. Civilization, as such, and all its amenities—money, comfort, influence—wiped out. Bernice found it peculiar to reflect how selfish her outlook had been up to now.

  “You and I are engaged, Nick,” she resumed presently. “I don’t suppose we intend to stay permanently in that state, so what happens if we want to marry? Who’s going to perform the ceremony?”

  “Seems to me that Dawlish is the only answer.”

  “Dawlish! But he’s only a servant—”

  “There you go again, Berny! He’s the captain of this little band of ours, and a captain has the right to perform a marriage ceremony. Yes, he’s the one to do it. I think there might be a Bible aboard the Mary Newton, which will give the authentic touch.”

  “Well, why not tomorrow? No sense in delaying, is there?”

  Nick did not answer. He had come to a halt and was standing with his attention sharpened, as though listening to something. Bernice frowned as she studied him.

  “What’s the matter—?” she began, but Nick raised a hand for silence. For a long time he was motionless, then at last he relaxed and rubbed the back of his head ruefully.

  “I’m going cockeyed,” he announced. “I could have sworn I heard people talking.”

  “Talking! Who? Where?”

  Nick looked about him in the pearly gloom. “Sounded to be a lot of them. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The craziest thing of all is that one of them sounded like Henry T. Mythorn himself!”

  “I think,” Bernice said seriously, “that it’s time we got back to base and had a sleep—or at last you should. When you hear voices in the wilderness it’s time to quit!”

  Nick did not answer. He turned about, took Bernice’s arm, and they began to stroll back the way they had come. He did not mention the matter of the voices again in case he sounded too ridiculous, but he was quite convinced in his own mind that he had heard them—and said so to Dawlish when he returned to camp.

  Dawlish was doing his best to sleep when the information was given him. It was vital enough to make him sit up sharply. Some distance away Harley Brand was vomiting
and groaning.

  “Voices?” Dawlish repeated. “You’re sure?”

  “Sounded like it. It’s crazy, of course.”

  “Not necessarily. It may be a point where this plane over­laps the normal world and the barrier between is so thin that sound waves carry across it. It may even be a point we can investigate with a hope of getting out of here! You’d better show me.”

  By this time, Betty Danvers—not properly asleep anyway—had also awakened. She scrambled up hastily from under her dustcoat and followed Dawlish, Nick, and Bernice as they strode swiftly into the night. Lucy Brand looked after them for a moment, puzzled, then gave her attention again to her husband.

  “About here,” Nick said finally, when he had returned to the approximate spot. “Doesn’t seem to be anything at the moment, far as I can hear.”

  Dawlish, however, was not satisfied with this. He roamed slowly around in the gloom, his ears cocked. Nick and the two girls wandered in a narrow circle, not quite knowing what they were going to hear—if anything at all. Then Betty Danvers stopped and retraced a few steps.

  “Here!” she gasped. “It’s absolutely uncanny!”

  Immediately the others were at her side. All four of them motionless, catching gusty drifts of conversation as unreal and remote as something on the astral plane. Here and there a sentence or two became “detached” from the general murmuring and made sense.

  “...night club of his makes a packet of money....”

  “...that she is, but she’s selfish, concentrates only on her own pleasures....”

  Then a woman, clear and distinct for a moment— “If you ask me, she’s only going to marry Nick Clayton for his money. That painted hussy hasn’t an unselfish bone in her body!”

  “That’s me they’re talking about!” Bernice gasped, amazed. “I don’t recognize the voices, but I’ll swear it’s one of those old hags at the house-warming!”

  “Can’t be!” Betty protested. “That was a couple of nights ago—maybe more. How could we hear it now?”

  “Echo?” Nick suggested—then as mysteriously as they had made themselves evident the voices faded into silence as the weird, shifting barrier between planes intervened again.

  “Interesting,” Dawlish commented, moving around in an endeavor to make contact—and failing. “In fact the most interesting thing that has happened so far. At this point the veil is extremely thin.”

  “Yet immensely strong.” Nick sighed. “Otherwise we could walk straight through into the normal world.”

  “Let me see, now,” Dawlish mused, looking about him. “We traveled, when on the road, almost to the point where the village would have been, when the petrol gave out. It is quite possible that our movements in this plane have con­formed to the movements we might have made in the normal plane, which would have brought us to the vicinity of Mythorn Towers, Mythorn Towers being the only house in the district where people are up and about—the rest of the village being asleep—it is the only place from where we can hear voices.”

  “It’s crazy!” Nick objected. “We’ve lived some days and nights since then—”

  “Time outside may be almost stationary compared to here,” Dawlish pointed out. “Don’t forget that radio announcer.”

  “Do these voices give us a better chance of getting home?” Betty asked flatly.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Dawlish replied guardedly, “but at least it does pin a certain familiar section in the outer world—and around that we can, by degrees, form the rest of the parallels with our own environment. The village, the road up which we came, and so on. We can return at inter­vals and see if any more voices reach us.”

  He said no more. Instead he searched around until he found a piece of stone. Returning with it he dumped it in the spot where the voices had been heard.

  “So we’ll know it again,” he explained. “Now we’d better get back to base and catch up on some sleep. We’ve a lot to do tomorrow.”

  Because he was the leader Nick and the two girls followed obediently behind him but each one of them, as they tried later on to sleep amidst the disturbance created by Harley Brand, was thinking nostalgically of those weird voices—and of home.

  * * * *

  The following morning Harley Brand was normal again. Looking very chastened, and as though suffering from a bad hangover, he apologized at breakfast for his behavior of the previous night, even though he had obviously only a hazy recollection of what had happened.

  “Lucy told me I was a bit of a boor,” he said uncertainly, as the group sat around a meal of fish, ship’s biscuits, and canned meat, with which the Mary Newton had been found to be plentifully supplied.

  “Forget it,” Dawlish said, shrugging. “You can’t be held responsible for what you do under the influence of a drug. I only hope you won’t try smoking that stuff again.”

  “I’m cured,” Harley sighed. “I don’t want to smoke any­thing any more. Tough way to reform, but it worked. Come to think of it, I don’t need this either.”

  He pulled his wallet from his pocket and examined it. Within it was about three hundred pounds made up in various denominations of currency.

  “Hold it!” Nick advised him. “We may be nearer to escape than you think. Destroying that money might give you a thrill, but it would haunt you forever if we found our way back home.”

  Harley hesitated and frowned. “Back home? How?”

  He was told of the voices, then to add flavor Dawlish produced a rough map he had made. He laid it down so everybody could see it.

  “I was awake early and drew this,” he explained. “First I explored the Mary Newton and found this food—and there is a good deal more too, which being canned should be all right for us. Then I drew this map. The dotted lines repre­sent the normal world, and the others this plane we’re in. A kind of superimposition.”

  “According to this map, then, this place here—where we have our base—is about two miles beyond the village of Little Brook,” Bernice said.

  “Yes, Miss Forbes. And across here”—Dawlish indicated the dry grassland extending away infinitely from the base camp—“is the lane up which we traveled in the car, and lost ourselves. At the remoter end of it is the signpost where we turned off and into this incredible plane. I think we should mark each point with stone and by that means we can approximately position where we are in relation to the outer normal world.”

  “What’s the good?” Harley growled. “We can’t get back.”

  “We might one day,” Dawlish answered. “Anyway, it can do us no harm to stroll, even in imagination, through the world we once knew. Even to hear the voices coming from there is a stimulus.”

  “If we went far enough we’d contact London, I suppose?” Betty enquired.

  “I imagine so, by moving eastwards.”

  The meal progressed, then Harley seemed to have a change of heart.

  “All right then, I’ll mark out the positions after break­fast. Suit you, Dawlish?”

  Dawlish nodded. “You take the map. You’ll need it. We’ll continue the building of the bungalow. There are tools on the ship there, just as I’d hoped. I suppose you ladies will help us?”

  “Definitely!” Betty declared, getting to her feet. “And incidentally, Daw, are you anything of a doctor?”

  He smiled. “Why? Do you need first aid?”

  “No, but I’d like a check-up on this heart of mine. I’ve already told you I feel tons better than I did, and I’m still feeling that way. I want to know if it’s a fluke or a per­manency.”

  “Why bother?” Dawlish asked, shrugging. Then he got to his feet actively. “Well, we’ve work to do. Let’s get started.”

  As usual he was obeyed. Harley set off on his mission to mark out the landscape and those left behind transported tools from the ship and then turned themselves into builders. By dinner time the floor of the bungalow had been completed, and by early evening one wall was up. Bernice set herself the task of preparing the evening meal over
the ship’s trans­ported oil stove, near which was a newly opened drum. On the stove the frying pan was busy. Fat sizzled as freshly caught fish browned appetizingly.

  The meal was eaten and enjoyed and, as usual, conversa­tion began to float into desultory channels; then Dawlish got to his feet in readiness for recreation.

  “I think I’ll take a stroll,” he said.

  “I’ll come with you,” Betty said promptly.

  Bernice glanced at her and then asked a question: “Daw­lish, are you capable of marrying Nick and myself?”

  “I imagine so. After all, there are only ourselves to con­sider and if we all agree that that shall binding, then so be it. A Bible would help, though.”

  “Here,” Lucy Brand said, handing one from behind her. “Bernice found it today on the ship.”

  Dawlish took it, then glanced at Nick. “I take it you are agreeable, sir, as the other party?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “But!” Bernice exclaimed, staring. “What in the world do you mean?”

  “I—er—I’m not trying to slight you in any way, Berny, but what if we find our way back home unexpectedly? We shall then no longer be legally married.”

  “Surely that’s simple enough?” Harley asked in surprise. “You’ll get married again in the ordinary way.”

  “I don’t think we should,” Nick said uncomfortably.

  Bernice set her mouth. “You’ve always led me to believe we’d get married.”

  “Right enough, but just consider. Dawlish performs the ceremony and we become man and wife. Suppose a child followed? Let’s assume we’re in this place for ten years.... How do we explain, if we accidentally get home, that we need to get married when we have a child of ten with us?”

  “Scandal and muck-raking,” Betty sighed. “Wouldn’t the columnists love it? And they’d pick on you, good and hard, because you’re worth so many millions.”