“My conclusions are verified! Flint besides being a brilliant doctor is also a master-telepathist. He either has a mind ideally suited for transmission and reception of thought, or else he has learned the art better than any other man living in this world. Either way he has communicated with this other plane.
“But it is also clear that he has definite leanings towards a criminal state of mind. Like many men with too much scientific and medical knowledge, he doesn’t know where to stop. Not all of them have that spark of divine genius that makes them invaluable to the world. That is left to the few.”
Lloyd licked his lips at the personal reflection and went on. “Though not actually possessing a police record, Flint certainly has been—and still is, no doubt—in close contact with many underworld dives. He could not otherwise have written these remarkably clear treatises on the relationship between crime and medicine. He refers to several specialized types of criminals whom he has obviously met. He gives fictitious names, of course. I fancy it might be possible, however, to track down the various people mentioned in these volumes by way of police department records. Tomorrow I’ll see what Inspector Branson has to say about it. I’m ready to move now.”
“But what do you hope to gain by tracking down these criminals?” Ed demanded. “It’s Flint we want—not the subjects of his treatises.”
Lloyd smiled tolerantly. “How do you imagine a plague would begin, my friend? Do you think Flint would walk about sticking hypos into people? He would have agents scattered everywhere. What better place is there to recruit them than from the ranks of crime with which he is already in contact?”
“Funny! I never thought of that!”
“Quandoque bonus dormitat Rutterus!” Lloyd murmured. “Even the worthy Rutter sleeps at times. Fortunately, I remain awake.”
* * * * * * *
Inspector Branson was cordial, but doubtful, when Lloyd tackled him in his office at headquarters the following morning. Ed, on a day’s vacation to see the thing through, added his own corroboration. Not that Brutus Lloyd needed corroboration: he had it in the voice record and culture phial.
“Have this tested by your chemists and they’ll find something they never knew about before which can paralyze the population of New York,” Lloyd announced, holding the phial up. “Then have them check the formula by the voice record Ed Rutter here took. That can’t damage your infernal red tape surely?”
Branson took the phial and laid it down gingerly. He looked at the little scientist thoughtfully, then finally he nodded.
“All right, Lloyd, I’ll do that much. Frankly, though, I never quite know how to take you. You get the most extraordinary scientific ideas sometimes and—”
“And they are always right,” Lloyd finished calmly. “This is no exception. However, I am not a detective—in the sense of snooping after criminals, I mean. I am a scientist. That is why I have to enlist your aid in tracing the living originals of the descriptions given in these books by Flint. You’ll find them blue-penciled. You can manage that?”
“Don’t see why not.” Branson flipped the pages. “Take about a couple of hours. Suppose we manage it? What then?”
Lloyd picked up his umbrella. “I’ll tell you in a couple of hours. Meantime, some lunch is indicated. Let’s go, Ed.”
They returned at the appointed time to find Branson ready with a pile of record cards.
“Ten of ’em we’ve easily identified from description and surroundings.” he announced. “The rest aren’t so easy. These ten are always under police observation, anyway.”
“You could rope them in for questioning?” Lloyd inquired.
“Nothing easier.”
“Then go to it. You’ll find one of them will crack wide open and admit he’s in contact with Flint. If one of them does that, the rest is easy. You can round up the others in no time—if it’s necessary. It’s probable that Flint hasn’t started circulating his bacilli, yet, and I don’t suppose these crooks will know the real issue anyway.”
“I hope,” Branson said, pressing a button on his desk, “you’re all straight about this, Lloyd. After all, basing your original theory on a man who can see into another space is a bit tall even for you.”
“Ab uno disce omnes, Branson,” Lloyd responded, beaming. “From a single case infer the whole.”
“You’d better be right,” Branson observed grimly.
Lloyd stroked his “J” pensively. “I’m sitting right here until those crooks are roped in, if I have to wait a week. Once you’re satisfied, Branson, a warrant for Flint’s arrest can follow pronto.”
IV. SCIENTIST OF ANOTHER WORLD
Ralph Marshall wondered more than once what Ed and Lloyd were doing as the days slipped by. At least he had complete confidence in them, which was everything. For his own part he did not relax his efforts in the slightest: in fact he could not do so very well, since he was obliged to look into the laboratory of Maravok every time he took his glasses off.
As on the other occasions, Maravok spent each night doing his telepathic work and making notes. During the daytime he made medical experiments and also put the finishing touches to a device like a metronome. On the fourth night he had the ‘metronome’ finished, and stood watching it pensively.
Ralph moved across his cell, the better to see what was going on. He stood gazing at the inverted pendulum as it swung rhythmically to and fro—but it struck him as curious that when he moved towards it—actually across his own cell of course—the pendulum ticked all the faster and increased its swinging to nearly double.
A sense of unexpected danger touched him. He saw Maravok’s cruel face set in granite lines. He turned sharply, gazed unseeingly at Ralph, and then round the laboratory. Ralph backed away instinctively and the metronome resumed its former leisurely beat. He felt—he knew—that that device was somehow geared to register alien vision in the laboratory. In truth, it was the device of which Maravok had already spoken telepathically to Flint.
Ralph sat down to watch, clenching and unclenching his fists. He saw Maravok settle in his chair and lie back to concentrate. As he remained motionless various thoughts twirled through Ralph’s brain. He knew quite well by this time that the scientist was planning something pretty diabolical from a medical standpoint, something that was no doubt destined to endanger his own people as much as Flint’s scheme would endanger the people of the everyday world.
But how was it possible to get at the man from another space? Unless, perhaps, the metronome...? That, so far, was the only thing Ralph had seen which was capable of reacting between planes. Probably it was accomplished by the vibration of bodily aura passing between molecular spaces. That was quite a logical possibility, anyway. If so....
Ralph looked at the instrument again. It was not fastened down in any way. The shelf on which it stood was directly over an array of bottles of fragile glass containing all manner of chemicals. Some of them were probably explosive if mixed together. Certainly there were numerous acids.
Ralph began to smile to himself grimly. Perhaps there was a way to destroy this other-world laboratory and Maravok with it. Back of Ralph’s mind was the remembrance of the alarm clock on the mantelshelf in the living room at home—the thing that had slid itself along by its own vibration every time it had rung. Suppose that the metronome could be made to vibrate strongly enough to slide over the edge of the shelf? It might, if he went close enough, and Maravok was sitting with his eyes closed, concentrating.
Ralph rose up and walked across the cell slowly, watching the instrument immediately increase its rate of pendulum swing. Closer—and it still increased. He reached out both his hands and waved them in the space where he imagined the thing must be. That action, as the electricity from his body passed across the gap, made the pendulum become a mist. The instrument, even as he had hoped, began to tremble and slide uneasily along the shelf towards the edge.
At that moment Maravok opened his eyes and looked up. He catapulted out of his chair, arm outthrus
t, but he was a shade too late. The metronome slipped into the midst of the glass bottles below, and in his frantic urgency Maravok missed catching it completely.
Ralph stood watching the results of his handiwork—but he did not watch for long. The acid jars spilled their fuming contents into saline-looking chemicals. There was a sudden unholy spurt of flame and deep yellow smoke. Almost instantly it was followed by a blinding flash of incandescent light. No noise, not a sound, but the glare and vibration hurled Ralph back across the cell as though he had been thrown. His eyes twinged and stabbed as though rammed with white-hot needles. He could not see the laboratory any more, only a spotted curtain of chaotic dark.
Gasping with pain, clawing at his eyes, he scrambled to his feet. He had hardly done so before the door lock clicked and somebody came in.
“Who’s there?” he demanded, staring into the dark.
“Just me, Mr. Marshall.” It was the unmistakable voice of Flint. “I thought perhaps a little chat might be advantageous. You see, I only just learned this evening how completely I have played into your hands. I realize that you know of my telepathic activities with Maravok, whom you killed only a moment or two ago by some method or other....”
Ralph stood rigid, his pain abating. He tried to place the position of the voice. It was by the door. He clenched his fists and said nothing.
“Tonight Maravok learned for the first time that there were other eyes watching,” Flint went on. “His instrument revealed it. It could only be you. Since you must obviously know most of my plans, I cannot imagine anything better than for you to be the first victim of the plague that is about to strike the continent. I have everything ready. My agents will be advised. Right here in my hand is a hypodermic, one injection from which will insure your death within fifteen minutes. Since countless others will be affected within a few hours, and since only I possess the antidote, it will obviously not be a case of murder but death from an unknown disease. Simple, isn’t it? Had I known you knew so much I might have done it sooner—”
“Damn you!” Ralph roared suddenly, and charged for where he knew the table was. He seized it, slammed it forward to the position of the doorway, blundered round it. Flint gasped with pain, then his voice came again, thick with fury.
“You can’t get out of here, Marshall! Not with those warped eyes of yours! You’re as blind as a bat, and I know it! You can’t get out, I tell you—”
Ralph clawed suddenly at the door handle, then he stopped at a grip on his arm. Instantly he whirled up his fist into the dark and felt it impact bone. Flint went staggering back across the room, tripped, and dropped his length, the syringe flying out of his hand.
Ralph’s sharp ears heard it tinkle on the woodwork round the carpet, and that was enough for him. He plunged forward until he stumbled over Flint. Seizing his neck he raised him, hammered home his right fist time and time again into the doctor’s face...until a sudden smashing blow in the jaw stopped him for a moment.
He lashed out again, missed, and another blow hit him in the face. It was followed by one over the head that laid him flat on the floor. He felt his senses reeling. A weird miscellany of noises came to him. The sound of running feet, the desperate breathing of Flint and the scratching of his hands as he clawed for the syringe—
Then for Ralph the sounds faded away into silence.
* * * * * * *
Ralph returned to consciousness to the knowledge of a throbbing head and a bandage across his eyes once again. He stirred slowly and the voices of Ed Rutter and Dr. Lloyd reached him simultaneously.
“Take it easy, Ralph; you’re O.K.,” Ed said. “But we were only just in time.”
“In—in time? How? Why?”
“Thanks to me the police came to arrest Flint,” Lloyd said modestly, after briefly recounting the earlier events. “We couldn’t find him in his study, but nurses had seen him going toward your room. So we followed. We got him just before he could sink a hypo into you.”
Ralph relaxed with a sigh. “Then that’s settled! I cleaned up Maravok and you cleaned up Flint!”
“What!” Lloyd cried. “You mean you did something to cause Maravok to be destroyed?”
“Sure I did....” Ralph related the full facts. At the end of it Lloyd drew a deep breath.
“This explains much!” he exclaimed. “I had a look at your eyes when you were unconscious and my tests showed they were almost normal. Something had shifted them out of that other plane to the normal one, but even my wide experience could not imagine what it could be. I thought it might have been the result of the blow Flint gave you when he hit you with a chair. Now I know the truth. The blast of flame in that other plane gave the necessary optical shock to slam your vision right back to normal after a brief spell of blindness, which you are now undergoing. In two days’ time you’ll be seeing as well as ever again.”
“You mean it?” Ralph cried eagerly, sitting up again.
Lloyd glanced at Ed and smiled. “Ralph does not know it,” he observed gravely, “but stat magni nominis umbra.... He stands in the shadow of a mighty name.... And the owner of that name never makes mistakes.”
The little scientist was right. Two weeks later Ralph was back on his Shaft.
CASE OF THE MURDERED SAVANTS
1. VISION OF THE DEAD
“Another scientist murdered! Extry! Extry! Paper, sir?”
“Yeah.” Rex Thomas took the evening edition of the Observer and studied it with a frown—indeed, more than a frown. There was a look of blank horror on his young, good-looking face.
It was Dr. Brian Thomas, famous metallurgist, Rex Thomas’ own brother!
“It isn’t true,” Thomas whispered to himself, stupefied. Then he went on, thinking aloud,
“A knife in his heart like all the others before him? No—it’s too damnably horrible!”
And he was the fourth scientist in a row! Four prominent scientists in as many months—
Horley, the great neurologist, had been slain first. In quick succession had followed Bennet of physics, Jansen of astronomy, and now—
He looked up sharply, controlling himself as he became aware of people on the sidewalk glancing at him curiously. With sudden decision he thrust the paper in his pocket and headed swiftly for police headquarters.
Inspector Branson, the bull-necked chief of the neighbourhood precinct station, looked up from his desk as Thomas was shown into his office.
“Inspector, I—I just read about the murder of Dr. Brian Thomas. He was my brother, my twin brother. I’m Rex Thomas, radio specialist.”
Branson smiled faintly. “I’m aware of that, Mr. Thomas. Matter of fact, you’ve saved us the trouble of roping you in for questioning.”
“Roping me in—?” Rex Thomas echoed in amazement.
“We’re satisfied with your actions,” Branson said reassuringly. “At the time of the murder, you were working overtime at the Apex Radio Factory—last night, that is. Don’t worry; we know all about you.
“We wanted to question you about your brother’s associates. Do you know any of them? If we can get a clue to anybody who might have a reason for getting him out of the way, we might have a lead that will direct us to an arrest. Can you recall anybody likely to have a motive for wishing your brother out of the way?”
Thomas scratched his blond head.
“Guess not,” he sighed. “I came here to ask if you’d got any line on the killing—though I don’t suppose you would tell me if you had. I rarely saw my brother. He lived in a world of his own—a scientific world of research. I have my life; he had his. All I know is that he lived in a house in the suburbs with one manservant. I can’t imagine who’d want to kill him.”
“Hmm.” Branson compressed his lips. “Just as we can’t yet see why this steady murdering of scientific men is going on. No apparent motive. It’s the damnedest thing I ever heard of!”
“A maniac, perhaps?” Thomas suggested, thinking hard.
“Perhaps— However, while you’re h
ere you can add your identification to the body. It’s in the morgue.” Branson pressed a button. “After you have identified the body, you are free to go, but not out of the city. You’ll probably be needed later on. Everybody connected with your brother is under suspicion at the moment.”
“I understand.” Rex Thomas nodded; then as the plainclothes man came in he turned and left in his company.
At the morgue he went through the ordeal without a word, merely nodding his head dazedly as he gazed on the waxen face of his dead twin—a face so like his own.
He hardly recalled how he went out into the street again. Though he had had few dealings with his ambitious, scientific brother, the murder had come as considerable of a shock. Thomas went home to his apartment lost in thought. He was just in time to catch the telephone ringing noisily.
“Yes?” he said absently into the mouthpiece.
“Hello, Rex!” It was the familiar voice of Beryl, his fiancée. “I rang before but I got no answer.”
“No—no, I’m late.” Thomas roused himself. “I’ve been at police headquarters.”
“That’s what I’m calling about. I’ve just seen the paper. It’s terrible, Rex! Terrible! What are you going to do? What are the police going to do?”
“I dunno. I’ve got to stay in town, that’s all I know. But I don’t think I’ll have much trouble—my alibi is watertight.”
Thomas forced himself to realities, put more warmth in his voice.
“Thanks for the sympathy, Beryl—thanks a lot!”
“But of course I had to sympathize!” she cried. Then, quietly, “But I admit I had another reason too. Are you fit to come to the dinner tomorrow night? You know, the one dad is throwing? It’s a pretty highbrow affair, I suppose, but there’ll be lots of ignorant folks there, like you and me, who aren’t interested in scientific mumbo-jumbo. After what’s happened I wondered if you’d be fit to—”
A Case for Brutus Lloyd Page 4
