I tried standing up alone. That was no dice. The agony in my head and the weakness in every part of me made it impossible to take a step. I sat down on the sofa with a groan.
Anne heard it as she came in. “What are you trying to do?” she demanded. “Sit still.”
She had brought some pieces of ice and a towel, and she put them immediately against the back of my head. It may not have been the medically orthodox thing to do, but it helped. The waves of fire inside my skull gradually went out. “Thanks,” I said after a time. “That’s the ticket, all right.” She was looking at me with such anxiety and sympathy that I wanted simply to surrender to it. But the thought of Julian kept me from it. I wondered what to do. “So he’s locked himself in up there . . .”
“Yes.”
The house seemed utterly still. “I don’t hear the noise.”
“It isn’t going.”
“It will be,” I said. A thought struck me. “Listen dearest. Do me a favor and don’t argue at all about this. Get clean outside this building and just wait. I want to try to talk to him through the door. But if I’m right, this house is no place to be in right now. God knows what he will do. He knows that he hasn’t got time for anything much. He may turn that thing on full. If he does, I don’t want you to be around.”
She kissed me. “You don’t suppose I’m going to leave you, Dick?” I wanted to argue with her, but there was no opportunity. We heard something that made me aware the time for talk was over. There was the noise of a car, two cars, three, roaring into the yard. People were arriving, and I thought I could guess who and why they had come.
“All right,” I told her. “This is the pay off. Stick with me and don’t say a word more than you have to.”
31.
THEY CAME through the back door without knocking. We could hear their feet in the kitchen. In a minute the living room was full of them. Big Dan Hoskins was the first, moving with a deceptive calm. Behind him was the man who had spoken to me outside the store that morning, the deputy, Pete Barnstable. Seth Marcy, of course, and his taxi driver cousin, his narrow eyes sharp with excitement and a vicious sort of satisfaction. There were others, too, several of them. Last of all, two women.
One of them was Mrs. Walters. The other, inevitably, was Ellen Hoskins, looking quietly anxious. I wondered what Mrs. Walters had told them all, but there was no time for speculation.
“Where’s Blair?” the sheriff demanded, looking down at me.
“Upstairs,” I told him.
He whirled on his feet and started for the door.
“Wait a minute, Sheriff, and listen to me before you do anything. He’s locked himself in up there, and he’s desperate.”
“Desperate or not, he’s got somethin’ to answer for.”
“What?”
“Causin’ a fatal accident. Failure to report the same. Connivin’ to cover the hull thing up.”
“The bastard,” said Seth Marcy and his voice was heavy with satisfaction.
“Most of that,” I pointed out, “was done by Mrs. Walters, here.”
“You’re all guilty, if it comes to that. But Blair’s gonna be under arrest the minute I lay my hands on him. I done my best for you people, but I’m through.” He went out the door. There was a general surge after him. “If I need the rest of you,” his voice came back down the stairs, “I’ll call you.”
There was silence in the room for a minute after he left. They stared down at Anne and me on the sofa, their faces heavy with anger and a kind of fierce pleasure. I felt cornered, but I hope I didn’t show it. Anne sat perfectly quiet beside me. After a minute she opened her compact and powdered her nose. It was the first time I had seen her do that and I knew it was a gesture of defiance. Ellen Hoskins chuckled, but Seth Marcy scowled. He shouldered his way past Pete Barnstable and halted in front of me.
“Git up,” he said to me.
“Don’t, Dick,” Anne said and then to Seth Marcy, “He’s hurt.”
“Not as much as he’s going to be.” His heavy boot caught me square in the shin. For a moment I thought the bone would break. He drew his foot back again. “I aim,” he said slowly, “to teach you something, you dirty woman-killing son of a bitch.” That time the kick did not land. Ellen Hoskins caught his ankle on the backswing with the crook of her umbrella handle.
“Your language is nasty, Seth,” she said calmly. “Yeah,” said Pete Barnstable. “That’s enough rough stuff, Seth. We’ll give these folks what’s comin’ to ’em, legal.” He grinned.
“You see, Professor Sayles, I am not a good person to threaten.” It was Mrs. Walters’ voice.
“Shut up, you,” said the deputy.
I looked at Ellen Hoskins. The pain in my leg and the heavy throbbing in my head made it hard to keep my voice under control. “What did she say to you?” I asked.
Ellen looked at me curiously, without pity but with no hate. “She simply told Dan how you had all arranged Mrs. Marcy’s death to look like an accident. How Mr. Blair planned the thing, how she made the footprints, how you, Professor, put the body in the river before Miss Conner and you drove into town and got Dr. Rambouillet.”
“You believe that?”
“I don’t know.”
Anne looked at Seth Marcy steadily until he dropped his eyes. “For the first time,” she said pleasantly, “I see how lucky Elora really was. I used to wonder where she got those bruises on her arms. I see now, of course. You used to beat her.”
Big Dan’s feet were loud on the stairs before there was any answer to Anne’s quiet speech. He came into the room and confronted me. “Well, you were right. He’s locked in there, all right, and he won’t come out. It’s a steel door, and I don’t reckon it’ll break easy. We’ll have to go in through the windows.”
“There are steel shutters on those.”
He glared at me. “Go outside, Pete, and take a look.” The deputy reluctantly made his way through the crowd. After he had gone the sheriff demanded of me, “You been inside there?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he got in the place? Any weapons? Guns?”
“Nothing,” I told him, “but a piece of scientific apparatus. But I wouldn’t break in. If I were you, I’d get out of this house as fast as I could.”
“Why?”
“Because that apparatus of his is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” The difficulty of explaining that seemed too much to me in the state I was in. “I have an idea you’ll be finding that out before long. Did Mrs. Walters tell you about it?”
“She said it was some kind of a crazy machine for talkin’ long distances.”
“That’s right,” I told him, “very long distances. For talking with the dead.” I let that sink into a silence that was suddenly so intense that I had an insane desire to laugh at the lot of them. “The reason Mrs. Walters didn’t tell you the whole story, as well as the reason she wants to implicate us with herself, is because she believes in the thing. She thinks it will work and she wants to have it for herself.”
The sheriff was nonplussed. He looked, I was interested to notice, first toward his sister. Seth Marcy said, “Let’s cart the whole lot of them back to town, Dan. A coupla nights in the cooler and they won’t talk brash like this rooster any more.”
Ellen Hoskins’ voice was cool. “You don’t seem to believe in this invention of Mr. Blair’s.”
“Not in that way,” I answered, “But I meant what I said about its being dangerous.” I thought perhaps she might believe me so I went on. “I saw it work this morning. It builds up a potential somehow— creates a vortex in space—I don’t know exactly what. But if he turns it full on, the lot of us may—or may not—be here after it’s over.”
She nodded. “Dan,” she said, “why don’t you let Professor Sayles talk with Mr. Blair? Maybe he can persuade him to come out.”
“No,” I said. “He won’t come out for me. You’ll have to get through that door somehow. Maybe a blowtorch will do it.” Th
en I remembered my earlier idea. “Anyhow, Sheriff, don’t think too much about getting him out right now. The most important thing of all is to cut off the electric power that runs that thing of his. Tell one of your men to do it right away, for the love of God.”
He looked at me curiously. “Why?”
“So he can’t work it,” I answered impatiently. “Hurry up, I tell you.”
The big man did not move. “That ain’t in my province. Anything I do to get him out is one thing. Destroying property except in line of duty is another.”
“He’s just tryin’ to distract you, Dan.” It was the taxi driver again. “You folks talk a lot out here,” the sheriff said. “I can’t tell the sense from the lies.” He made no further move.
I opened my mouth to plead with him once more, but before I could say anything, Pete Barnstable came in, his jaw sagging. “That’s right about the shutters, Dan. You can see it from the ground that they’re made outa steel, like a safe. And they’re all shet tight. Reckon we won’t git in that way.”
The sheriff nodded. He told off a man to drive to town and bring back a blowtorch at once. As an afterthought he ordered Ellen Hoskins to go along. But she shook her head. “I can look after myself, Dan. And you’ll need a record of what happens. I’m needed here.”
He shrugged his tremendous shoulders. “Have it your own way, Ellen,” he said. Then he looked over the room. “I don’t guess we’ll be needin’ the rest of you,” he observed. “You better clear out. This here’s the law, not a tar and featherin’. Or a wire pullin’,” he added for my benefit.
They showed no disposition to leave at first, but he simply stood there and waited. After a while they began a sheepish sort of exodus. In five minutes the room was clear except for Seth Marcy and his cousin. Dan Hoskins looked at them. “I’ll call you if I need you,” he said.
Seth stood his ground. “I aim to stay right here till you get that crazy bugger out’n that room, Dan. It wuz my wife.”
Ellen Hoskins sniffed audibly. For my part I did not care what happened. Things were beginning to seem shadowy to me. The pain in my head and my leg were almost unendurable. I simply sat still and waited. Most of my mind was not in the room, anyhow. With Julian locked in that place of his upstairs I felt it didn’t matter much what happened down here. He knew—he must know—that this was his last opportunity with the thing on which he had labored so long and with such passionate hope and faith. What chance was there, I asked myself, that he would not try it once again? And having tried, and failed, would he not throw that fatal lever clear to the right? My imagination failed to picture what would happen then.
The sheriff cleared his throat indecisively. “All right, Seth,” he said at last. “You can stay, if you behave yourself. But he’ll have to go.” The cousin shifted his narrow eyes from Seth to the sheriff and back again. Neither of them gave him a sign. In the end he muttered to Seth, “give him one for me,” and went out. We could hear the sound of his car starting out back and then the rasp of gears. He was gone.
“Now, Perfessor, I want you to go upstairs with me and we’ll try talkin’ to him through the door once agin. Ellen, you and Miss Conner and Mrs. Walters stay down here with Seth and Pete.”
I stood up on my good leg and set the other to the ground. It hurt like the devil, but I could stand on it. As I went past Seth Marcy I looked him in the eye. “Like to try it again?” I asked.
“Sure.” He started a punch that might have killed me if it had landed. I caught him full in the throat with my fist and let him have the other under the ear as he went down. His breath came out of his windpipe with a heavy gurgle. “That’s for the shin,” I said, “and to help you keep a civil tongue.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Perfessor,” the sheriff said while I was pulling myself up the stairs.
“I know. You didn’t see him kick me in the leg a minute ago, while I was sitting on the sofa, but your sister did. If she wants to press the charge, go ahead.”
He grunted. “Seth’s kinda mean sometimes.”
The hall was dark. We stood at the head of the stairs and looked around us. “Listen,” I said to the sheriff, “I want you to promise one thing. If you begin to hear something you’ve never heard before, don’t stay with me. Go down those stairs like a bat out of hell and get everybody outside at once. That thing he’s got in there is perfectly capable of destroying the house. Don’t believe me if you don’t want to. But your sister’s down there.”
He looked at me carefully, as if to find out whether I was telling the truth, then nodded, and we went slowly down the hall together. The window at the end was a dull gray; twilight was already gathering in the air outside. We stood a while outside the cold steel of the door, listening. Julian was moving around inside. There was the occasional clink of metal on metal and another sound that puzzled me at first. It was, I realized finally, Julian muttering to himself. The sound of his feet on the floor when he moved was hurried.
“Julian,” I cried and pounded on the metal. “It’s Dick. Open the door.”
“Go away.” His voice was urgent, defiant, curiously roughened, as if he were breathing hard and with difficulty.
“Julian, for the love of God! Leave that thing alone. The house is full of people. It isn’t safe.”
His steps came rapidly across the floor, louder as they drew nearer. “Richard,” he said and I could even hear him panting. “I will never open this door. Get away from it. You’re only making me lose time.”
The sheriff stirred at my side. “We’ll have to burn the door down if you don’t come out, Mr. Blair. This is the law, Dan Hoskins, sheriff.”
There was something hysterical in the laugh with which Julian answered him and then we could hear his footfalls receding. I had a sudden flash of understanding. He was laughing because a lummox of a country sheriff wanted to stand between him and the greatest enterprise—and the maddest—which a man ever undertook.
I tried once more. “Julian!” I shouted and hammered at the door till my fist ached. “Think what you’re doing! Anne’s here. If you start that thing again, you may be endangering her. Let me in, for God’s sake!”
His voice was curiously thin and faraway as it came to me, through the steel of the door. “Too late,” he said. “Too late, Dick. This time I’m going to find out . . .”
The rest of what he may have said was lost in the whispered hum that began to fill the air round us. The sheriff turned a white face in the gloom of the hall. “My God!” he said.
I gave him the hardest push I could from only one sound leg. “That’s it, you fool!” I shouted. “Get them out of here. Then cut the wire if there’s time. I’ll keep on trying, but get downstairs and get them out.”
“Jesus,” he said wonderingly and then he was off down the hall. His feet lumbered loud and heavily on the stairs, but I did not listen to his going. The draft was beginning to suck round my ankles.
“Julian! Not all the way! Julian!” I could hear no answer. Very likely my voice never reached him at all. The roaring tumult of that thing inside was growing with every passing second. I could see it in the eye of my imagination, hovering now in the space between the ceiling and the black table, already ominously grown. If only the power had been cut off! But it was too late now. I turned to go down the hall. The farther away I was when it happened, the greater the chance that I might escape. But I had no real hope, only an instinct to try even the most forlorn chance.
The wind in the hall was so strong now that I could scarcely make
progress against it. The noise was cataract loud, but even through it I could hear the timbers of the old house cracking. Dust began to fill the air so that I could scarcely see my way. It came swirling up from every crevice between the boards, sucked out by the air. I looked back. The steel door, it seemed to me, was coming loose on its hinges. I could see a thin line of yellow light along the top and bottom of its surface. The noise of the maelstrom inside was so terrific that I could no longer
hear. It was like being in the heart of a cyclone.
Somewhere between Julian’s door and the head of the stairs the thing happened. The old house had been strained even beyond the power of shipwright’s timbering to resist. There was a crash, a series of crashes. Plaster fell from the ceiling somewhere; boards screamed as they were wrenched loose from their moorings of a hundred years. And then there was a clap of thunder so loud that nothing which had gone before it mattered.
I found myself lying on the floor of the hall. I was numb, almost without feeling of any sort. Plaster was scattered in fine lumps over my head and shoulders, and it gritted under my palms when I got myself heavily into a sitting position and leaned against the wall. But the thing was over. I drew a deep breath and coughed; dust and powdered plaster were in every cubic centimeter of the atmosphere. Gradually I pushed myself up against the wall. I wondered dully about Anne. The sheriff had had enough time to get her out. I prayed that he had. Then I began to grope my way back down the hall, littered as it was with wreckage. Why I went that way instead of toward the stairs I could not have said. But go I did, feeling my way along the wall. I made slow time of it, partly because I was dazed and more because the air was blindingly full of plaster dust.
Before I had gone ten feet a voice bellowed up the stairs behind me. I knew it must be Dan Hoskins, but I paid no attention. The dust was beginning to settle and I could make out the rectangle of the window. The whole of the sash had been torn away, but the frame was still there. I put each foot down cautiously, and tried to see whether the floor was complete under me. It seemed to be.
The door of Julian’s room was gone from its hinges. I stumbled
into the place, my eyes smarting. The place was so altered, even in the gray light of the three windows from which the shutters appeared to have been blown bodily inward, that I hardly knew it. Plaster, lathing, boards, bits of glass, fragments of ebonite, and pieces of wire were everywhere. The ceiling, I saw, had been forced inward and was wrecked over the whole of its middle. The floor bulged upward, except at the center, and there it gaped open in an irregular hole that must have been several feet across.
The Rim of Morning Page 48
