“Hello, Swami,” Graham said. “Or are you using the title of professor now, or perhaps doctor? I haven’t seen you in a long time. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
“Hello, Graham,” Featherstone answered. There was no pleasure in his voice.
Chambers looked, doubtfully from one to the other. “You two seem to know each other,” he said.
“Oh, the Swami and I are old friends,” Graham said. “Of course, I didn’t know I was coming to see him tonight.”
“What are you doing here, Graham?” Featherstone said.
“I’m here in the interest of a client,” Graham answered promptly. “Are you going to let us in or are we going to have to go out in the street and throw rocks at your windows until you decide to invite us in?”
Graham was assuming a lightness he did not feel. He knew Featherstone, knew him as a master of the art of separating a gullible sucker from a dollar. What was more important, Featherstone knew him. This was a development he had not anticipated.
It was too late to back out now. Featherstone had seen him with Chambers.
Featherstone made no move to get out of the doorway. He frowned at Graham.
“I might have known that sooner or later I would find you butting in on this,” he said.
“Does my presence inconvenience you?” Graham asked.
“It isn’t that.”
“No? Then what is it?”
“It’s this. You know some of the hocus-pocus I have used in the past.”
“I believe I have heard of one or two little tricks you have used in some of your operations.”
“I’m not using any hocus-pocus now. This thing is real!”
For the first time Graham realized that Featherstone was scared, not of the detective, but of something else. Was it possible that Featherstone was scared of his own hocus-pocus? Had a faker run into something that wasn’t a fake? Had a sleight-of-hand magician found that his magic was working without sleight-of-hand? Had a witch doctor found a death charm that worked?
Or was Featherstone lying, was he putting on an act? That the tall, skinny crook was a first class actor Graham did not doubt. Was he acting now?
“I don’t quite understand you,” Graham said. “If you have actually made an important discovery, you have nothing to fear from me. On the other hand, the price you are charging for dead rabbits seems a little high.”
Featherstone turned his gaze on Chambers. The white-haired sportsman wilted under that hard stare.
“You’ve been doing a lot of blabbing,” he said. “You’ve been working your mouth overtime. The money you donated was a willing contribution and you know it.”
Chambers said nothing. All color had left his face.
Featherstone turned to Graham. “You can come in,” he said. “And judge for yourself whether the price of dead rabbits is too high to pay.” He turned, led the way into a large studio-apartment.
“You talk too much!” Mildred Chambers fiercely whispered to Graham. “You open that big mouth of yours and everything you know comes out of it. You shouldn’t have mentioned that rabbit!”
“Why not?” Graham challenged. “I know this man. He’s a faker and a crook.”
“But supposing he is not faking this time?”
“Then I have challenged him, and my neck is out a mile.”
“And mine too, and daddy’s!”
“Your neck was already out, baby, and so was your father’s. All I have done has been to add mine to the list.”
“But—”
“But the minute Featherstone saw us together, we were all on the spot!” Graham answered. “He knows me, he knows my reputation, he knows I’m here to show him up if I can. Because I was with you, he knows that either you or your father hired me to catch him. Baby, we’re all in this together.”
* * * *
Not counting Featherstone, there were seven people in the apartment when they entered, four men and three women. There was also a little dog, a Boston bull, with a round face and a white spot over one eye.
“Sit down,” said Featherstone. It was an order, not a request. He left without introducing them to any of the seven people present.
They sat down in chilly silence. The four men and the three women glanced at them but said nothing. Graham got the impression that these people were tensely awaiting something.
The little Boston Bull came and sniffed at his legs. He reached down and scratched it behind the ears. It snuggled up close to him, tried to sit on his feet. He noticed it was trembling. Chambers looked at the dog and his lips closed in a straight line as sharp as the edge of a knife. The apartment had originally been designed as an artist’s studio. The room was huge, with a high ceiling. Broad windows as one had been designed to give light from the north. The windows had been painted black.
Directly under the windows was the strangest piece of furniture in the room, a black box about four feet square. Wooden blocks lifted it a foot above the floor.
Featherstone came back into the room. With him was a round-faced, scar-cheeked, hard-eyed, little man who seemed to be his helper.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Featherstone said. “The demonstration I know you are all anxious to see is about to begin. But first I have an announcement to make, an announcement in which I know you will all be interested. We have with us tonight a man who has devoted a major portion of his life to exposing fakes and tricks of all kinds, a man who has boasted that he can duplicate every effect in every séance ever held—”
Graham twisted in his chair.
“George Graham, ladies and gentlemen, is with us tonight. If there is trickery in the demonstration you are about to watch, I am quite sure he will detect it.”
Seven pairs of eyes turned toward Graham. He sat as immobile as a rock. The woman with the long cigarette holder looked almost hopefully at him. The thick-necked man in the blue suit gave him a slow stare. Mildred Chambers turned her head and glanced at him.
Featherstone smiled mockingly at him.
“Turn loose your devils, Swami,” Graham said. “Let your spirit trumpets blow, let ectoplasm be unloosed.”
At his feet, the little dog whimpered in fear.
* * * *
Featherstone spoke to his assistant.
“Louie, will you catch the dog.”
The scar-faced little man put on a pair of heavy gloves and approached the Boston bull. It cringed against Graham’s feet and tried to jump into his lap. Graham did not know what was going to happen. He let Louie catch the little dog, firmly repulsing the impulse to kick the scar-faced man in the mouth when he bent over to pick up the frightened animal.
“Examine the dog closely,” Featherstone urged. “Mark it in any way you see fit.”
The animal was passed from person to person in the group. They looked at it with rigid fascination, seeming to see in it the horror normally reserved for a snake. Graham looked at it closely. It was just a little Boston bull, scared now, frightened by something it sensed was going to happen. Only one person in the group touched it. The thick-necked man in the blue suit took a pair of nail scissors from his coat pocket and carefully clipped a round spot of hair from the middle of its back.
“You are satisfied that you know this animal and recognize it?” Featherstone asked when the examination was complete. All seven nodded.
“And you, sleuth, you can recognize it?” Featherstone said to Graham.
“I imagine I will know the dog again,” Graham answered.
“Good. Louie, will you put the dog into the steel box.” He nodded toward the square black box standing on the floor at the far end of the room.
The assistant lifted the lid, dropped the little animal into the box, closed the lid again. He wasn’t rough about it, nor was he particularly gentle. He just dropped the dog into the box as casually as a person m
ight drop a cherished pet a couple of feet to the ground. Graham heard the soft thud as the dog hit the bottom of the box. He also heard its feet pound against the sides as it tried to leap out again.
There was a broad hasp with a heavy padlock on top of the box. Louie locked the lid into place, handed the key to Featherstone who placed it on a coffee table in plain sight of everyone.
Graham was uncomfortable. There was something here that he didn’t like, that he didn’t like a little bit. He tried to think what it was, and decided it was the casual, impromptu, matter-of-fact manner in which Featherstone and his assistant were acting. Graham had not the faintest idea of what was going to happen, but he had sat through hundreds of séances, he had seen table tipping, and spirit rapping, and had listened to fake mediums relay fake messages from the dead. A factor common to all these performances had been darkness. There had also been a consistently strong effort to secure a theatrical effect to impress the audience. The rooms had been draped in black cloth, the mediums had frequently worn turbans, they had covered themselves in black robes, in many instances the audiences had been required to hold hands, they might even have had to sing songs during the buildup.
The buildup had always been there, the bad theater had always been there, strong appeal to the emotions had always been there.
All this was missing here. Featherstone had not tried to impress his strictly limited audience. He had not resorted to any of the tricks of the trade. He was wearing a plain brown business suit that looked like it had been made by an expensive tailor. His assistant was dressed in baggy serge.
* * * *
Featherstone had not gone into an act. He hadn’t even turned off the lights! He grinned sardonically at Graham; he paid the other members of his audience no attention at all. Yet they sat like statues, not moving, scarcely breathing. The woman with the long cigarette holder had nervously stuffed another cigarette into her holder. She was trying to light it and was so nervous she couldn’t strike a match.
No one offered to help her. Featherstone glanced around his audience. “I can call devils from the vasty deep,” he said, and paused.
The words were familiar. Graham could not quite place them but they sounded like something out of Shakespeare. The answer, as he recalled the words, was “Why, so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you call them?”
“They will come,” Featherstone stated.
No one spoke.
In the black box at the end of the room, the dog suddenly, began to bark.
“I must ask you not to move under any circumstances until I give you permission,” Featherstone continued.
The audience sat spellbound. Featherstone’s assistant went to the front door and carefully locked it, then stood with his back against the wall.
“Now he’ll turn out lights,” Graham thought.
Featherstone left the lights burning. The big studio was almost as brightly illumined as it would have been if the noonday sun had been shining into it.
Featherstone turned his back on his audience. He walked to the black box, stood in front of it, lifted his arms. He was looking up, up at the window that opened out on the night.
On the other side of that window was New York. The blaze of lights in the sky, the honk of taxicabs, the far-off rattle of the elevated, all the dim sounds of a great city. New York and the Twentieth Century.
His feet spread wide apart, Featherstone stood with his arms lifted in supplication. The black box in front of him seemed to be an altar and the window seemed to open out on something other than the New York night.
“Come!” Featherstone called. His voice had all the deep impressiveness of a ringing bell.
Something came through the closed window like an arrow from the bow, came out of the New York night, came through the window and into the room.
No pane of glass in the window was broken or otherwise disturbed, but something came through it, came with the darting speed and high-pitched drone of a gigantic bee, came darting into the room.
A thin, tinny scream came from the lips of the woman with the long cigarette holder. It was choked off. She stared wildly in the direction of the window, the pulse pounding feverishly in her throat. No one paid any attention to her. No one even noticed that she had screamed. She slumped forward to the floor in a faint and still no one noticed her.
A glacial wind raised ten thousand goose pimples on Graham’s body. This—this was his secret fear. In every séance he had ever attended and every trick and fraud he had ever exposed, his secret fear had always been that sometime the séance would not be a trick, that sometime the creature from the shadow world would not be a fraud. The bear had been kept deep in his subconscious mind, unrealized, unknown, a secret canker that he did not know was haunting him. When the window pane blurred but did not break, when the vicious whine of that darting bee was suddenly loud in the silent room, his secret fear burst from his subconscious mind and nearly drove him mad.
* * * *
The fear that hides in darkness, always out of sight, making itself known only by the vague feeling that something is looking over your shoulder, is a hideous trauma, a driving force scourging men to destruction.
Graham’s right hand dived unbidden inside his coat, seized the butt of the pistol holstered there. Only the exercise of iron self-control kept him from leaping to his feet.
Sweat trickled down his neck inside his shirt and wilted his collar.
Featherstone stood with arms still uplifted. Little movements of his head revealed that he was trying to watch something in the air.
The vicious whine of a gigantic darting bee was in the air.
Featherstone was trying to follow the movement that had come through the window.
Graham tried to follows its movements too. It was in the room. He could hear it. He could almost see it. Every time he thought he had brought it into focus it darted somewhere else. He caught glimpses of little blurred distortions in the air, little glancing glimmering heat waves.
Now and then he saw tiny flashes of reflected light. They were always gone before he could focus his eyes on them.
He tried to estimate its size. He could not see it clearly enough to tell how big it was. It seemed to vary in size. Now he thought it was as big as a baseball, now it seemed to be the size and shape of a plastic football.
It darted over Featherstone’s head and came straight toward his audience.
Hands still uplifted, he turned his head and tried to watch it. On his lean, dark face was the expression of terrific mental strain.
It whined viciously six inches in front of Graham’s nose. He couldn’t see it. Pain went back along his optic nerve as his eyes tried to bring it into focus, pain as sharp as the shock of an electric current.
It was instantly gone.
It hung in the air before Mildred Chambers. She seemed to have stopped breathing. Her face was ghastly white. It moved on and stopped in front of her father.
Whitman Chambers closed his eyes. He looked like a dead man sleeping. Sweat ran down his face and dripped unheeded from the point of his chin. Then, it moved, and he opened his eyes again.
Graham had the impression he had closed his eyes to avoid the shock of electric pain that came from trying to focus on the thing. If that was true, then Whitman Chambers had seen it before and knew better than to try to look at it.
* * * *
It passed in front of the other members of the group. Some of them looked at it. Some of them closed their eyes. The woman in the red dress moved bloodless lips in prayer.
It hung in the air in front of the thick-necked man in the blue suit. He stared defiantly at it. He was not easily intimidated, was this man. He had a kind of surly courage that was not easily put down. For a second, he tried to stare. Pain distorted his face. He winced, and closed his eyes.
“Come!” Featherstone said.
>
The whine darted toward him.
“Accept the sacrifice,” he said.
The lid of the black box blurred. The whine of the bee was instantly subdued. It was still audible, but it was much weaker now.
Another sound was in the room.
The sudden howling of a frightened dog!
The little Boston bull in the box was howling in sudden fear.
The dog screamed its fear. The pounding of its body against the sides of the box as it tried to escape was loud in the room. It yelped and leaped and howled that unbearable horror had come to it. It begged to be released from horror, it tried to escape from its fear, it fought and kicked and screamed that death was better than this anguish.
And stopped pounding against the sides of the box, stopped howling, stopped screaming its horror, stopping asking for—death.
Death found it.
There was not a sound in the room. The woman who had fainted lay where she had fallen.
Featherstone, still standing with his legs wide apart, and his arms uplifted in supplication, spoke. “You have accepted the sacrifice.” He waited.
“Then go!”
Something came out of the box, whirled once around the room, then went through the window and was gone into the night. A window pane blurred with sudden shifting lights but was undamaged as something went through it and out into the Twentieth Century New York night.
* * * *
Featherstone picked up the key from the coffee table and handed it to Graham.
“Will you unlock and open the box?” he asked.
Graham took the key. Featherstone sat down and cupped his head in his hands. He looked desperately tired. His assistant hastened off into a back room.
Mildred Chambers knelt beside the woman who had fainted, began to rub her wrists.
The man in the blue suit stood up. “I’ll help you,” he said to Graham.
They unlocked the box. Featherstone took no interest in what they were doing. His assistant had returned with a bottle of brandy and Featherstone was pouring himself a drink of that.
The little dog was in the box. Its teeth were bared in a fighting snarl.
The Alien MEGAPACK® Page 21
