John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  And now? The chasm, of course! I seemed somehow to be highly elated with the gruesomeness of my mission, a mission totally foreign to my normal nature. Grimly I picked Betty Pym’s limp body up in my arms, raised it over my head with unbelievable ease, then hurled it with all my strength into the eternal winds that rage and fume through that eight-hundred foot chasm. Immediately it vanished, lost to sight in the moonlight.

  I threw myself down on my face and stared into the abyss. The wind stood my hair on end, whistled through my teeth. I was chilled to the bone. Still, I had accomplished my purpose, and that gave me a strange sense of complacency. Complacency for the implacable murder of a defenseless woman I hardly knew? What sort of a dream was this? It was endowed with a vicious and transcending realism, far more vivid than any dream before; and yet I insisted to myself it was still a dream. That being so, I realized, from all the observations on dream psychology, that I ought to be awake. The realization of a dream being a dream immediately causes sleep to cease—but in this instance I went on dreaming!

  Puzzled, I rose up at last and turned to look toward the silver streak of Coniston Water, my only link with the hotel. I moved forward, stumbled amid the countless stones. I was shivering and shaking both with cold and reaction, reeling and sprawling in ever-widening circles into the maw of a dank and inexplicable darkness …

  I awoke suddenly, as though I had been forcibly thrown out of sleep into the waking world. The effects of that appalling nightmare were still upon me; relentless cold gripped my hands despite the warmth of the little bedroom. Shakily, I scrambled out of bed and connected the electric heater. By degrees, bathed in the radius of its warmth, I began to feel more comfortable; the spasmodic twitching of my limbs ceased, the paralyzing sense of terror abated.

  I sat there, wrapped in a blanket, my back against the foot of the bed, and gazed into the heart of the radiator’s red-hot wires, trying to marshal some order out of the chaos in my mind. Once I got up and examined my shirt, trousers and shoes. A vast relief swept over me at discovering they were exactly where I had left them; the shoes were quite clean and bore no traces of the mud of the hillside. Satisfied, I crawled back into bed and slept again, without dreaming.

  Awakening late in the morning, I dressed and shaved moodily, sneezed an absurd number of times, and finally made my way down to breakfast. Pym was already there, quietly eating bacon and eggs.

  “You look tired, Moore,” he commented, surveying me. “Didn’t you sleep well?”

  “I had a hell of a night,” I answered briefly. “Must have been a cold coming on, I think. Awful dreams, too.”

  “Awful dreams?” he repeated in vague surprise. “How queer! Do you know, when I have a cold I don’t dream at all. I seem to be drugged, in a sort of utter stupor. What did you dream about? Dreams interest me, you know.”

  I looked at him steadily. “I dreamt I stunned your wife with your heavy ebony walking-stick, then murdered her by throwing her body from the top of Coniston Old Man into that chasm you pointed out last evening,”

  “My dear fellow, you were in a bad way! A walk this morning will clear your head a bit, perhaps.”

  “Incidentally,” I said, an odd feeling in my heart, “where is your wife?”

  “Oh, she went out for an early walk—she always does on holiday. Good Lord, Moore, you’re not thinking that dream of yours was some sort of premonition? Or that it actually happened?”

  “It—it was so vivid!” I muttered. “Thank God I did only dream it!”

  I began to eat, with this consolation in my mind, but did not proceed very far. I was in no humor for food. I was about to rise when a hand suddenly fell upon my shoulder, and a voice, deep and strong, said:

  “John Carlow Moore, I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Betty Pym …”

  I twisted round, my heart thudding violently, and met the cold, gray eyes of a police inspector. Behind him in the doorway of the dining-room stood two constables. Pym sat there opposite me, smiling strangely.

  “Pym!” I gasped hoarsely. “What does this mean?”

  “It means, Moore,” he said grimly, “that my wife’s body was found in Dow Crag chasm, early this morning—by me! I went for a walk before dawn; I was unable to sleep and puzzled by her strange disappearance. I came upon her—horribly murdered. Naturally, I immediately notified the police; they were at work while you slept after your inhuman butchery. In my room were found an old tie of yours, a button from the shirt you wore, and your fingerprints on my ebony walking-stick. It was a very simple matter to check them by the fingerprints on the bowl of your pipe up on the mantelpiece there. I persuaded the Inspector here that I could probably extract a confession from you, and I was more than successful, even though you did say it was a dream. A dream! My dear Moore!”

  “But—but it was a dream!” I shouted huskily. “Damn it, you told me yourself that your wife was out walking —”

  “Only to lead you on. I soon guessed that you were the culprit; you told me yesterday that you hated my wife!”

  I opened my mouth to speak, hut the words refused to form. My mind became a tumbling chaos of confused thoughts. I was dimly aware of being hustled from that dining-room and thrust, God knows how long after, into jail. Then, and only then, did my mind readjust itself. I secured the best defense I could and prayed for a satisfactory result. Poor fool that I was!

  Only once did Pym visit me. He was smooth and collected as ever, his pale blue eyes shining brightly—but I knew him at last for the devil he really was. Yet I let him talk, and I listened.

  “I felt that I should make it clear to you, my dear Moore, that I owe you no personal grudge. You have helped me wonderfully—proved the validity of the notion I told you about. My experiment, you see, was to discover if a man could commit murder without himself being anything but the mental agent behind it. It worked—admirably! My wife, you perhaps have realized, was prone to clandestine meetings with another man. I considered the problem very carefully from the moment I realized her unfaithfulness to me, and arrived at the conclusion that he was not nearly so much to blame as she. She was deceiving both him and me; therefore, she was better exterminated. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You make yourself clear as a cold-blooded, incarnate devil!” I told him.

  “Dear me; how very crude, Moore! However, I came to the Lake District to find a laborer or someone who would have done equally well as my tool; but it so happened I came upon you, so naturally I used you.”

  “Go on!” I said, bitterly.

  “I hypnotized you, Moore—completely. You remember the glitter of the tea-things when I told you that you would hate my wife? You remember the glare of the sun in your eyes when I told you that a body falling into Dow Crag chasm would be destroyed? You remember the heavy ebony stick I used to point out the landmarks? A complete sequence of events was hypnotically in your mind: hatred for my wife, the weapon for attack, and the place for the body …

  “Last night you did everything I had commanded. I was not asleep when you stunned my wife. I followed you to the top of the mountain and back again, holding you under hypnotic control all the time. I saw what you did with my wife; I followed you back to the hotel. Needless to relate, I cleaned your shoes and re-arranged your clothing to reassure your perhaps puzzled mind. It was I, too, who provided the clues in my room that led to your arrest. So very simple, you see!”

  “You won’t get away with it!” I vowed, thickly. “I’ll do all I can to bring you to book!”

  “As you will,” he shrugged. “So far as I am concerned, the world is rid of a very evil and designing woman. As for you, I am seeing to it that a good motive for your crime is supplied. You see, I am naming you as the other man. Maybe a little unfair of me, but very necessary … But my time is up, Mr. Moore. I will wish you good day, and,”—he gave a twisted smiled—“good luck!”

  Quietly he left the cell …

  *

  Need I dwell on the harrowing details of t
he events that ensued? I stood no earthly chance at the trial—Pym saw to that! All my efforts to prove the case one of hypnotic control failed completely. A matter-of-fact judge and jury were not impressed by my story of excursions into the mesmeric world; rather, they regarded it as a deliberate fabrication to shield my guilt. I only blackened my case by resorting to the truth …

  As for Pym, he swore my soul away with a merciless implacability, aided by the extremely clever lawyer for the prosecution. I was found guilty and sentenced to death—a death whose details are mercifully hazy in my mind. But of the events following my death I have a very clear recollection …

  I was buoyed up into the midst of a vast and embracing darkness, in which all concept of my other life and body vanished completely. I never saw any trace of my mortal body again. I was alone in a world of utter silence, yet filled with a thousand thoughts and conceptions that I could only assume were the mental radiations of the living people in the everyday world so utterly hidden from me. There was no real conviction of loneliness, just that all-pervading sensation of being the recipient of constant thoughts. Some were vague, some distinct, and at last I began to realize that these latter were connected with psychic and clairvoyant individuals. In this wise I encountered the mediumistic abilities of Henry Clifton, and through him I have succeeded in giving the story of my innocent part in what became known, so he advises me, as the “Cumberland Horror.”

  But there are last words to add to this narration. I am dead? No! My body is dead, but my mind lives on, and in such capacity I have exacted my revenge for the terrible things that befell my earthly frame. Perhaps it was chance, or some instinctive mental gravitation, that caused me in my timeless wanderings to contact, finally, the mental vibrations of Enoch Pym himself. His thoughts, his every mental facet, were bared to my extra-mundane perceptions.

  I gathered that he was in London, pursuing psychic and spiritualistic experiments, indulging in hypnotism, and generally turning hallowed and cherished concepts into a turmoil of diabolical villainy. He had found my vanquishing so simple that he was planning his hypnotic efforts on a larger scale, overpowering leaders of commerce and finance with his fascinating personality and ruthless mind. I perceived in him a mass-murderer, and therein also beheld my duty—and my own vengeance!

  For interminable periods I held his mind in bondage, until the time came when I could strike. It came at one of his séances. I fought his hypnotic power with all the terrific energy of my free mind, until at last I felt opposition snap like the breaking of a bough in the wind and the emptiness of my eternal wanderings was devoid of all disturbing influences. The mentality of Pym had gone; and yet he could not be dead, surely, or I would have felt his presence in the after-life.

  No, he was not dead. Clifton has told me that he became suddenly insane and babbles even now about a man named John Carlow Moore and a murdered woman on top of a mountain … Truly, then, I am avenged. I have gained a lasting and eternal peace, and am free to move endlessly in these swarming currents of mental vibration. Free—gloriously alone, and yet—unafraid!

  WINGS ACROSS THE COSMOS

  My name is Amos Latham, and I am, I hope, a reasonably intelligent man. I know nearly all the subjects encompassed in a modern education, but I must admit my knowledge fell far short on the day that I found an object resembling the half shell of a walnut lying at the bottom of a neatly drilled five-foot hole in my best sweet pea bed.

  My job? In a way, I’m a farmer. I like to experiment in grafting, pursue if possible hybrid experiments on the lines laid down by Mendel.

  I found the walnut on June 7th, just six days ago. It was a perplexing puzzle in itself to decide how an object so small, unless it were a meteorite, had got to such a depth overnight—but the puzzle deepened when I found that by no means at hand could I begin to budge it!

  I began to suspect the thing had some sort of underpart that went down like a shaft into the ground at the bottom of the hole it had burrowed—that what I saw was only the upper part of some sort of buried spear. That being so, the only thing to do was to clear the sides of the thin shaft and dig the object out.

  It took me half a day to make the shaft wide enough to permit me getting down it, but even then I was no better off. I could see clearly enough that the walnut was simply a hemisphere of shell-like substance—but of a vastly incredible weight! I strained and tugged at it until my fingers ached. But I couldn’t shift it in the slightest. I just couldn’t convince myself that such a fact was true—but it was.

  To say my curiosity was aroused is putting it mildly. I went into the garage and brought out a block and tackle. I erected it on a pretty stout scaffolding tripod and fixed the chain clamp around the inch-square lump. The tripod snapped, but the object didn’t budge!

  That settled it. Beyond question I’d happened on something that was outside all normal laws, at least in the matter of weight. I remembered something about electrons and protons in contact—neutrons—and went inside the house to telephone Bradley.

  Bradley is a physicist, in the employ of the Bureau of Standards. He arrived late that afternoon. Bradley, with his usual foresight, had brought along a powerful breakdown truck, complete with crane, trailing behind his car.

  I greeted him warmly as he came toward the house, but as he returned the greeting there was a doubt in his closely set gray eyes.

  “Where is this walnut of yours?” he asked, after we had had a drink. I took him out to the sweet pea bed, or rather what was left of it after my excavation work.

  The thing was still there, and the faint smile vanished from Bradley’s face as he tried vainly to shift it.

  “Boy, you have got onto something!” he whistled in amazement. “If that stuff belongs on this world I’m clean crazy. Anyway, we’ll soon see.”

  Scrambling back to the top of the small crater he signaled the truck-men. They backed their conveyance clumsily into the garden and watched curiously as they lowered the crane chain. Finally we managed to encompass the walnut in the clamp and gave the pull away order.

  A terrific strain was thrown on the chain as it slowly creaked and groaned over the winch. Powerful though the truck’s engine was it took every vestige of it to lift that absurdly tiny thing from the ground. Very slowly it rose up, inch by inch. We saw that the underside was apparently like the rest of it. Brad was watching the thing keenly.

  Finally, we had the object deposited on a huge stone block that had once been part of a well at the bottom of the garden. There the task of the astounded truckers ended. They went off round-eyed and puzzled in a settling haze of dust, leaving us both to our own devices.

  Smoking pensively, Bradley studied the object for a while, then turned to me.

  “Dense as hell,” he said bluntly. “Pretty similar to the stuff that must exist at the core of Earth, though infinitely denser than even that.” I nodded slowly and waited for him to continue.

  “That lump came from somewhere out in space,” he resumed. “Where, we don’t know, but we can hazard a guess—probably from the region of the giant star areas. Specks of substance like this floating around in space probably made up the cores of the very worlds around us—stuff so densely packed that it had an unbelievable weight. It may be a fragment from a sun where matter is densely packed.”

  “You mean a white dwarf?” I suggested.

  He nodded.

  “That’s it. Take the Companion of Sirius, for example. That is a white dwarf, and Adams at Mount Wilson Observatory proved long ago that the density there is two thousand times greater than that of platinum. Take a matchbox full of the stuff and it would require a derrick to raise it. That’s the kind of thing we’ve got here. That’s why it ploughed so deep into the earth when it arrived. Strange it didn’t burn up; can’t quite figure out that angle.”

  I pondered. Physics isn’t entirely in my line; but Brad hadn’t finished talking. He studied the object more closely for a while, then went on.

  “Come to think of it, this
substance might not be from a sun, but from a cooled world. Eddington tells us that heat is not entirely necessary for compressibility of matter. It is not essential to have a temperature of about ten million degrees in order to smash atoms. Terrific pressure alone will suffice.

  “The shell of satellite electrons which can be broken by the attacks of X-rays, or the fierce collisions going on in the interior of a star, can also break by the application of continued pressure on a dense world. This produces an almost bare nucleus with the heavier atoms retaining a few of the closest electrons, forming a structure of perhaps one hundredth of a complete atom.

  “The consequent compression produces vast weight by comparison with sizes to which we’re accustomed. Take the example in physics: in a monatomic gas like helium a thirty-two fold increase in pressure gives an eight fold increase of density, if the heat of compression is retained in the gas. There you have an example of heat pressure—but on a world that is a child of a compressed sun—the Companion of Sirius for example—the very pressure of that world would produce similar, even far greater results. At the very roughest estimate this thing here weighs about one ton to the cubic inch—and that’s plenty heavy!”

  “And now that it’s here what do we do with it?” I asked quietly.

  He shrugged.

  “Nothing we can do, except give it to the meteorite section of the museum. I’ll make arrangements for it to be picked up. It’ll be about two weeks, though; I’ve a special Government job waiting for me.”

  Talking, we went into the house and had dinner. It was late when Brad finally left with the promise to return in two weeks. Once I’d seen him off I strolled over in the moonlight calm to survey again that uncanny lump.

  But it had changed! I got quite a shock as the rays of the amber moon smote now upon a tiny, tortoise-like head. Bent legs, exceptionally powerful, jutted outward from the shell. The legs moved slowly as I went toward the thing, but it stopped on the stone. Perhaps it realized that to fall off would mean another five-foot plunge into the ground.