John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  “I get all that,” Anderson said, “but how will you confine your efforts solely to dust? If you disrupt, or rather ‘collapse,’ the molecules of dust, I don’t see what is to prevent the very structure of all matter, since it is all atomic, from collapsing. And that would be catastrophe indeed.”

  ‘There are molecules of different orders,” Renhard answered: “True, certain things might break down as well as dust—and that is why I am going to project my vibration scheme into the sky, where the only damage that can be done is cloud disruption and dust disruption. That will not affect anything on the earth.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, professor; but once you have started this disruption, there will be nothing to stop it, will there?”

  “Yes. I have evolved the cause of disruption, and the cure,” Renhard answered. “I have it in my mind what will be necessary to stop the process I create, and thus when I have seen the effects of dust disruption, I will stop the process spreading by setting my subsidiary machine to work. It won’t take long to build; anyhow, not long enough for spreading disruption to do much damage.”

  Anderson looked his uneasiness. “But surely, professor, would it not be better to build your counteracter as well before starting the experiment? To be on the safe side?”

  “Needless precaution, Anderson. Besides, I want to be sure that my vibrator works before I go to the expense of building the counteracter. If the machine is a failure, there is no need for me to be too much out of pocket, you know.”

  “Something in that,” Anderson confessed. “If you do succeed in this you will undoubtedly stop the dust, all right.”

  “More than that,” Renhard answered slowly. “I shall be a benefactor of mankind. That is what appeals to me most of all.”

  “That all depends on the point of view, of course. Personally, I have always found mankind only too ready to turn on a fellow if his treasured plans don’t quite mature to the expectations of the majority.”

  Renhard smiled faintly. “I see, Anderson. You are embittered. Because you once made a slip—because the public held you up as a failure in your work, you have never forgotten.”

  “I can never forget that slip of mine.” Anderson brooded through an interval. “I, a surgeon, on my first great case—a slip of the knife, and a life was lost. I killed a woman with that slip, professor—a young woman. I lost my position as surgeon and became purely a physician. Such things are not easy to forget when —”

  “True,” Renhard said; “but you must learn to forgive and forget whilst you are young enough to do it. Now, may I discuss my plans with you, if you have the time to spare?”

  “Why, assuredly. Carry on.”

  It took Professor Renhard three weeks to purchase and erect his machinery. The erection was accomplished with the aid of Dr. Anderson, when he could spare the time; and upon the night of February 1st, three weeks later, the last bolt had been driven home, and the curious apparatus, a large, complicated mass of machinery, stood before an open window in an empty room at the rear of the professor’s luxurious Kensington home.

  The view from this window commanded a portion of London’s back streets with their glimmering lights; farther beyond were the hazy uprisings of light that betokened the packed and brilliantly illuminated centers of the Strand, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, and other nerve centers of the great metropolis.

  Dr. Anderson looked up at the frosty, star-studded sky, and then buttoned up his overcoat tightly.

  “Everything seems to be in order, Anderson,” Renhard remarked presently. “I see no reason why we shouldn’t experiment.”

  Anderson shrugged.

  “Just as you like,” he said, coming forward. “Give her the juice, and we’ll see what happens.”

  “Right!” Renhard flicked a button on the controlling panel of his vibrator, and it began to purr very softly as the self-acting and self-sustaining generator within proceeded to function.

  “It works!” Renhard breathed, rubbing his hands in silent glee.

  “I don’t see anything,” Anderson said, frowning.

  “Nitwit! You don’t expect to see vibration, do you? The negative electrical energy, being transformed into vibration by the machinery inside here—which after all you know quite as much about as I do, since you helped to assemble it—is even now being hurled forth into the air outside, is invisibly disrupting the atom electrons of dust particles, over an area of two thousand miles. Think of that!”

  “I am thinking of it, but I’d like to see something. Listening to this glorified vacuum cleaner of yours isn’t exciting enough.”

  “Glorified vacuum cleaner!” Renhard exploded. “You dare make such a comparison?”

  Anderson smiled faintly. “Sorry, prof; I didn’t mean to offend you. But look for yourself! The whole thing’s a fizzle! Nothing has happened! It certainly does not appear that you’ll need to build that counteracter after all.”

  The professor moved slowly to the window, taking care to keep out of the direct path of his vibration beam, and looked out on the unchanged view from the window. He bit his lip in vexation.

  “Certainly nothing is different there,” he admitted reluctantly. “I wonder if I made a slip somewhere in my calculations? Let’s go to the study and work it out again.”

  “All right,” Anderson agreed. “You’ll be catching cold in this ice house if you don’t. You always were hopeless at looking after your own comfort. Come on.”

  The professor moved disconsolately to his apparatus and reversed the switch upon the panel, which should have put the machine completely out of commission. He was not aware, however, that inside the instrument a whisker of wire had worked loose from the contact screw and was shorting across the two terminals. The movement of the switch only served to cut the machine’s power down about fifty per cent; low enough to make its humming imperceptible, but strong enough still to give forth that curious negative vibration to the atoms of dust—

  Silently the two passed into the study, and still in silence lighted cigars and sat down. Then the professor brought his fist down on the table with a resounding thump.

  “I can’t see where there is a mistake,” he growled. “I worked every bit of the thing out with painstaking care. If there is a fault at all it is either in the apparatus itself, or else we are expecting things to happen too soon. I’ll take the infernal thing to bits tomorrow if nothing else presents itself.”

  “Well, if that’s all there is for it, I may as well be going,” Anderson remarked, rising to his feet. “I’ve not had much sleep lately, what with helping you, and trying to get through my own work —”

  “I know,” Renhard said, in a quieter tone than usual. “You’ve been very good, Anderson, and I appreciate it. I know I’m intolerable at times. I’ll have to try to take myself in hand.”

  “I should,” Anderson said with a faint smile, pulling his hat down comfortably. “I—Hm-m-m! Seen my right-hand glove anywhere, prof?”

  “Eh? Why, no.”

  “I could have sworn I left it on this table with its fellow. Here’s one, but where is the other?”

  Renhard pressed a button upon his desk, and presently his one manservant, Gaston, appeared.

  “You rang, sir?”

  “Yes, Gaston. Do you happen to have seen one of Dr. Anderson’s gloves about anywhere?”

  The peculiar, unaccountably glowing eyes of Gaston turned to Anderson, then back to the professor.

  “No, sir, I have seen no trace of the glove in question.”

  “Very well, Gaston, thank you.”

  Anderson shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter. See you tomorrow, prof. Good night.”

  “Good night, Anderson.” Renhard answered absently. He sat for a time in deep thought after his friend had gone. Then he arose to his feet and went once again in the direction of the back room where his apparatus was housed.

  “Must be the apparatus itself,” he mused, for about the fiftieth time. “I’ll fix it tomorrow, but it o
ccurs to me I had better shut the window and stop this devilish draft whistling down the passages.”

  He entered the room, picked his way among the electric cables and impedimenta, and presently came to the window, reaching up and seizing the frame.

  It was as he performed that action that it seemed as though a knife of white-hot steel was passing through his body. He gasped with sudden pain and dropped involuntarily to his knees. It came again, but more piercing and terrific, snapping the life out of his vitals.

  He turned his head and saw that he was in a dead line with the vibrator lens. But surely he had switched it off —? something said in his pain-bemused mind. He made a last gasping effort to call for help, to call Gaston; then a sledgehammer blow seemed to rip his brain asunder. He collapsed without another sound to the floor, stone dead, his vibrator still issuing forth its mysterious negative energy—

  *

  II

  *

  Dr. Anderson awoke early the following morning with the distinct inner conviction that somewhere something was amiss. What it was he could not define. It was a very acute form of that peculiar sense of coming danger that we all feel at times in everyday life.

  It was still dark when he awoke; and a glance at his luminous watch showed him it was six thirty. The room was in darkness, and the only sound was the deep breathing of his wife.

  Following his usual custom after his ablutions, he crossed to the window to open it and allow the fresh morning air to enter, so that he could perform his brief breathing exercises. Humming a ditty to himself in a pleasing baritone, he slipped back the catch and flung the frosted glass sash wide open. It faced the east, and it was just past the hour of sunrise.

  At what he beheld, poor Anderson nearly fainted and dropped through the window. Not quite doing this, he collapsed limply upon the window frame, supported by his forearms, and stared with goggling eyes to the east, muttering soundless words.

  The sun was in the sky, just clear of the horizon—but what in Heaven’s name had happened to it? It was just a blazing, yellow-white ball, with a vague hint of solar prominences caressing its edges, rising in an almost dead black sky! The stars were still shining, despite the sunlight. Nature was suddenly intoxicated.

  “Great God!” Anderson whispered at last, drawing himself up and trying to imagine if there was perhaps some kind of eclipse in progress.

  “No—no eclipse,” he said to the dawn. “It’s something else!”

  Recovering from his first terrific shock, he tightened the girdle round his gown, and marched off downstairs—to encounter Cawley, his manservant. For once in his imperturbable life, Cawley was looking oddly shaken and uncertain. He jumped as Anderson almost violently clutched his arm.

  “Cawley—I’m not mad, am I?” Anderson asked quickly.

  “If you refer to the dawn, sir, no. You are quite sane—but, with all respect, sir, it’s a hell of a queer thing!”

  “I’ll forgive your language, Cawley. It’s apt, for once.” Anderson stood still and thought for a moment, then he glanced again at his watch. “Cawley, I do believe I have an idea what is causing all this! The professor! Renhard! The vibrator! Of course! What an idiot I am!”

  “Beg pardon, sir?” Cawley elongated himself into stiff servility.

  “Nothing, Cawley, nothing at all. Just thinking aloud. Listen carefully. I’m going out. When Mrs. Anderson comes down, tell her I’ll return shortly; tell her that I’ve been called away on a very urgent case. Urgent! I’ll say it is! The most urgent I’ve ever known. You understand, Cawley?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  Within ten minutes, Anderson was dressed, and stepped out into that astounding dawn. Almost immediately he became aware of pale, frightened faces staring up at the inky skies, of milk boys and news venders shouting with a tremor in their usually husky voices, of frightened glances cast to all points of the compass, as though in expectation of some approaching terror. Anderson reflected that he was perhaps the only man in London who could smile under the circumstances. Of course, that infernal vibrator had worked—but too effectively!

  Another thing Anderson noticed as he plodded on to the professor’s home was the utter blackness of shadows when out of the sunlight. They were like ink, triangular enigmas in which he floundered about helplessly, able to see the sun beyond, yet not a thing where he stood. Diffusion of light, refraction, had gone.

  He was bruised, hot and troubled when he finally arrived at the professor’s home, only to be met by another shock. Two policemen were at the gate, and a little knot of curious sightseers were gazing at the closed front door. Even the astounding sky failed to impress them, evidently.

  As Anderson made to turn in at the gateway, a strong, blue-clothed arm detained him.

  “Sorry, sir, you can’t go in there.”

  Anderson looked blankly at the constable. He seemed very solid and unworried.

  “Can’t go in? Why not?”

  “There’s been a murder. Professor Renhard, who used to own this house, has been killed.”

  “Killed!” Anderson clutched the gatepost for support. “But—but that’s quite impossible! Why, I was only talking to him last night! I’m his greatest friend—Dr. Anderson. I must go in, I tell you!”

  It seemed that a strange light entered the constable’s eyes.

  “Dr. Anderson, eh? That’s different, then. You’d better come in and see Inspector Wade.”

  Anderson was escorted into the familiar study, and there beheld another constable and a plain-clothes man. This latter personage looked Anderson up and down sharply.

  “You are a friend of Professor Renhard’s?”

  “I am his greatest friend, his dearest confidant. My name is Anderson.”

  “You can prove that?”

  “Of course. Gaston, the servant, will do that. Ring for him.”

  The inspector complied, and presently Gaston was before them.

  “This gentleman here says his name is Anderson and that he is a close friend of Professor Renhard’s. Or rather he was. Is that so?”

  Gaston’s strange eyes were gleaming.

  “Yes, sir, that is Anderson, certainly.” Then he turned aside and muttered something in the inspector’s ear. The inspector nodded grimly.

  “Dr. Anderson, when did you last see Professor Renhard alive?”

  “Last night. He was in perfect health. Where was he found? How do you know he was murdered?”

  “He was found in the room next door here—with a knife hilt deep in his heart!”

  “A knife!” Anderson echoed in horror. “But—but —”

  “A surgical knife; I believe it’s called a scalpel,” the inspector proceeded in a slow, grim voice. “And what is even more peculiar, it bears your name on the hilt!”

  “My name! But there is some absurd mistake here, inspector —”

  “I don’t think so,” returned the implacable voice. “I was intending to have you looked up in any case, but it seems there is some truth in the old adage that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime!”

  Anderson straightened up. His face was suddenly crimson with sheer indignation.

  “What the devil are you talking about?”

  The inspector did not answer. Instead he led the way into the adjoining room. Mute, Anderson looked about him. The professor’s body lay where it had fallen by the open window. The only other peculiarities were that the vibrator had ceased to function completely—not that Anderson considered there was anything unusual in this, since he fully believed it had been switched off properly the night before—and that a surgical knife was buried in the professor’s chest, directly above the heart. A crimson stain discolored his coat and the white boards of the floor.

  In silence Anderson went down on one knee and looked at the knife closely without touching it. Sure enough, his name was neatly executed on the ivory hilt.

  “Why, this knife vanished from my surgical instruments years ago, just a few days after I had performed
an unsuccessful operation on a woman,” he said, looking up, startled. “How in the name of the devil did it get there?”

  “That is a question only you can answer,” Inspector Wade replied coldly. “I will reconstruct your crime. First, you entered here last night by some means or other, got the professor into this room, and killed him with this queer machine, which in some diabolical way broke every bone in the professor’s body—even his skull! I have that fact from experiments on his dog—you see its body over there. We switched on that damnable contrivance and found that it destroys life. Lastly, to make sure of your victim you stabbed him to the heart with a surgical knife. Your motive is at present unknown. Then you departed, but, unfortunately, you left your glove behind on the floor here.”

  “A glove?” Anderson turned startled eyes to his own right-hand glove lying on the floor. Vainly his mind tried to link things together. “But I lost that last evening, and asked Gaston if he had seen it, when the professor was alive!”

  “Gaston saw you return and commit the deed!” said the toneless voice.

  “Gaston saw me return!” Anderson repeated incredulously. “But—but the man’s crazy! I never killed the professor with this machine! It’s an instrument for taking the dust out of the air, and that is what has caused this black sky this morning. It splits electrons and —”

  “You dare to make use of a perfectly natural eclipse to aid your tissue of lies?” the inspector thundered.

  “Eclipse! But this isn’t an eclipse. In that case the sun would be obliterated, and there would be distinct evidences of the corona!”

  “I’m scientist enough without your explanations,” the inspector snapped; then, turning to the constable behind him: “All right, take him away. He’ll have to be medically examined. There’s neither sense nor reason in this butchery. Out with him.”