From Afar

by John Russell Fearn

  What in thunder? Had it been a delusion...?

  “No,” I whispered, taking myself in hand. “No, that was no delusion. Get it through your head that you’ve got to work on this before it’s too late. You are not fighting just your wife but something diabolical that can do just as it likes with you—and her probably. You’re dealing with the unknown—a vast, overpowering unknown!”

  Yes, that was right! While I gathered my thoughts I drove on again slowly, towards the village. I was passing the local police headquarters when Hilton came suddenly into view in the doorway. He had evidently seen my approach through the window. He hailed me, came to the side of the car as I stopped.

  “Glad you dropped past—save me the trouble of runnin’ up to your place yet awhile, but I’ll go up later anyway an’ have a word or two with your wife.... Just routine, you know.”

  “Yes, of course,” I nodded, searching his face. Then casually, “Something wrong? Something new, I mean?”

  “In a way,” he said. “Still the Harkness job, of course. The Yard are on to it now, but I’m still nosin’ around a bit. Y’see, it seems one of Harkness’ last acts was to send off a parcel. His servant mailed it—accordin’ to later questionin’—and he says it was sent to your wife....” Hilton rubbed his whiskery jaw. “An’ that’s sort of queer,” he mused. “She said she’d never seen Harkness when I asked her about him. Remember?”

  “I remember,” I said shortly. “And so far as I know it is true. Anyway, what has this to do with Harkness’ death?”

  “Never can tell.... You say you never met Harkness neither?”

  I shook my head impatiently. “Of course not! And if he sent a parcel to my wife there was probably a very good reason for it. A—a neighborly act, perhaps....”

  “Oh, very neighborly.” Hilton studied me impersonally for a moment, then he said, “Even by itself it would be queer—no denyin’ it: but when the postal authorities in the village tell us yet another parcel was received today for your wife, from Italy by air mail—a rare thing in these parts—it begins to look more ’n just queer. It’s none of our business, of course, but we do know that an Italian singer died in the same way as Harkness. Seems odd that both folks died after sendin’ parcels to your wife, doesn’t it?”

  “What the devil have events in Italy to do with you?” I blustered.

  “Nothin’,” he admitted blandly. “But sometimes the police in different countries find things to help each other.... Well, I’ll keep you .no longer, Mr. Shaw. Probably see you later when I call on your wife.”

  He returned leisurely to his headquarters and I drove on again grimly, not caring where I went. So the postman had talked! I might have known it— The damned, driveling old fool! The police were on to the hunt now, and if they found those jewel pieces they’d probably arrest Beryl there and then. Somehow I had got to protect her. She was still my wife....

  Somehow I marshaled a plan out of the chaos. I drove on into the city, and had two keys made from my wax impression block. It took an hour, during which time I grabbed some lunch, then I set off back home. I arrived in the early afternoon, declutched the car into the garage to make no sound, then silently entered the house.

  My idea was to perhaps surprise Beryl in some guilty act. But instead it was me that got the surprise. Beryl was in the lounge, lying on the divan fast asleep. At least I thought she was. Her book on astronomy lay on the floor beside her dangling hand, and she lay breathing softly with her eyes closed. I wondered if the dosage of sleeping tablets was having still a latent effect.

  Softly I moved out into the hall again, and nearly collided with Mrs. Wilson.

  “Mrs. Shaw been out at all today?” I asked her quickly.

  “No, Mr. Shaw—not at all.”

  “Anybody called? Inspector Hilton—or the postman perhaps?”

  “Why, no, Mr. Shaw.” Mrs. Wilson gave me a mystified look. “Is anything wrong, sir? This morning you returned hurriedly with a small box, and now you are back long before your usual time. Can I get you something—?”

  “I did come back then, with a box?” I gripped her arm.

  “Surely: I saw you from the hall here. You didn’t look very well, I might add.”

  “No—I didn’t feel it. Did you see what happened to that box after I left it in the lounge?”

  “As I recall, your wife went into the basement with it.” Mrs. Wilson nodded rather dubiously to the closed door under the staircase.

  I thought a moment, then said, “Okay, that’s all. And you have not seen me this afternoon—remember that! It’s in everybody’s interests that you say that. I’ve an idea some trouble is blowing up.”

  She nodded slowly and went off to the domestic regions. I returned to the lounge to make sure Beryl was still asleep. She was. Picking up her book I looked at the page she had been reading.

  It was all about Andromeda—the Great Nebula of Andromeda—a long and highly technical treatise concerning the possibility of life on those far distant worlds swirling in that hazy scum untold light years away.

  Interesting? In a sense...and again I thought of that statement that the bloodstone might have come from outer space. Just for a second I hovered on the verge of the revolting, incredible truth—then I couldn’t pursue it any further for Beryl stirred very slightly.

  I made myself scarce immediately, hurried to the cellar, unlocked the door with my duplicate key and closed it behind me. Inside of five minutes I had hidden myself into the deepest shadows of the first cellar where I could watch and not be watched. I was in the dark, my heart thumping. I no longer had illusions about Beryl. If she discovered me she’d probably kill me....

  After I had waited for about ten minutes the door opened at the top of the steps. Good! My hope that she might come down here was being realized.... A switch clicked. Dim light illumined the cellar steps. She closed the door behind her, descended the steps quickly, walked right past the place where I was concealed and into the contiguous cellar. Another light came on. I watched intently.

  Her face had lost something of the frozen calm she usually registered upon it: rather she was looking worried. No—something more than that, even. Distraught! Like somebody working at top speed against an emergency.

  The first thing she did was to take down the writing-pad on which she had made some complicated notes about latitude and longitude. For a while she studied them, then nodded slowly, began to think out aloud in a tone I could just catch—

  “If these mathematics are right and the wavelength of thought is correct, I cannot miss. It succeeded with the Italian woman and Harkness: no reason why it should not succeed with London and Bermuda. Yes—it must be right. It has got to be right!” she finished

  She became quiet and left me puzzling. Wavelength of thought? What in blue blazes did she mean? Then I watched again. She went to the safe and took out two chunks of red jewel—Harkness’ and the one I’d brought back in the morning obviously—and laid them on her bench.

  She tested the facets carefully, finally found two that matched exactly. These she bound together with a spring-clip device and then put them in the matrix of her carbon-arc frame. Donning dark glasses she switched on the power and I had to jerk my eyes away from that searing white core of flame as she went to work.

  At the end of it, through a haze of pink spots, I saw that the two jewels had merged into one. As Beryl turned it about in her fingers it looked like the half of an immense diamond—and exact diamond-shape too. But the half-way line was rough and broken, obviously needing two more pieces to finish it.

  That brought a chill of horror back into my mind. Only Carson of London, and Cardew of Bermuda could supply those pieces. Were they already—? Was that what Beryl had been doing, by some mystic process, when she had apparently been asleep? Lord!

  Evidently satisfied she put the fused jewel back into the safe, slammed the door, then turned to the queer cylinder thing I had noted the previous night. Carefully, with the air of an expert technici
an, she went to work on it. She got busy with an electric welder, a hacksaw, a metal cutting lathe— Yes, she even fitted something that was darned close to an armature. Of course this was all crazy, for before the car accident she had not even known the ignition from the carburetor on an automobile. Yet now....

  The more she handled that object the more I began to guess at what it really was. It was some kind of rocket. The shining belly was there, the tubes for rocket firing—Andromeda! The two things sort of added up all at once to mean something, but I still did not know what.

  Then Beryl looked up sharply. For an instant I thought she had become aware of my presence; then I realized there was a sharp knocking on the cellar door and the voice of Mrs. Wilson. Beryl looked annoyed, put down her tools, then went up the stairs and switched off the lights as she went.

  I caught Mrs. Wilson’s words, “There’s the Inspector here again, madam—” Then the door had closed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  INSPECTOR Hilton! Things were blowing up for a showdown and no mistake. I waited a moment or two until I heard Beryl’s footsteps move away from the hall, followed by Hilton’s heavier tread. They’d gone into the lounge.

  I crept up the cellar steps, let myself out into the hall and closed the door again softly. Silently I moved across the hall, paused outside the door of the lounge and listened. Hilton was speaking.

  “—and so naturally, Mrs. Shaw, I felt it necessary to ask you a question or two. Why should Mr. Harkness, a complete stranger to you, send you a parcel?”

  “You have taken rather a lot for granted, Inspector,” Beryl’s cold voice retorted. “When I said neither my husband nor I had ever seen Harkness I did not mean he was a stranger. I have corresponded with him, even telephoned him, many a time. But we never met.”

  Lies! Absolute lies!

  “No letters were found from you, Mrs. Shaw,” Hilton observed. Then after an ominous pause, “And what was the nature of this—er—elusive acquaintance?”

  “Antiques, if you must know. If you were anything of an antique collector yourself you would know there are no lengths to which ardent collectors will not go to further their hobbies. I corresponded with Harkness over antiques. He promised to send me a very interesting specimen from his collection—and he did so. That it happened to be on the day of his death was pure coincidence.”

  “An’ what did he send you?”

  “A piece of heavy colored glass.”

  “The paperweight, eh? Just as I thought. An’ why didn’t you mention it when I said a paperweight had disappeared?”

  “How was I to know the paperweight and jewel were related?” Beryl asked sternly. “You’d be well advised, Inspector, to gather a little more evidence directly concerned with Harkness’ murder before you start piling up absurd data. I’m answering no more questions! Not until you’ve a definite reason for questioning me, anyway. You can consider yourself lucky I’ve obliged you so far.... Now, I have work to do—”

  “I suppose,” Hilton’s unabashed voice interrupted, “you were interested enough in antiques to also correspond with a Madame Borini, in Italy?”

  “Yes, I was,” Beryl admitted after a pause. “She sent me an antique only this morning as a matter of fact.”

  “Uh-huh,” Hilton acknowledged pensively, then in a sharp voice, “Ever hear of a jewel called—the bloodstone?”

  “Ever hear of confining yourself to facts?” Beryl snapped. “I’ve told you already I’ve had enough of this cross-examination! From your tone one would imagine you’re accusing me of murdering Boyd Harkness, and then a woman in far away Italy just after they sent me their bloodstone jewels—”

  “So that is what they did send?” Hilton’s voice asked softly, as Beryl stopped dead. “Thanks, Mrs. Shaw. Thanks very much....”

  There were footsteps. I’d only just time to dodge when Hilton came hurrying out. Quick as a flash I bolted for the hall’s rear window, scrambled through it and dropped into the grounds. For an hour after that I cooled my heels in the garage, then at the normal time for coming home I came in the front door as usual and walked into the lounge.

  Beryl looked at me sharply and I was forced to drop my gaze under the piercing stare of her blue eyes. That look was back—the look that went through me, through the room, through the wall—Somewhere. To Andromeda? What a speculation that was!

  “You’re back a little early, Dick,” Beryl said, and my astounding meditation snapped right off.

  “Er—yes. Not much doing today. How about you?”

  She did not answer at all. Her eyes were still watching me. I felt, I knew she suspected me of something, and was trying with every fiendish device at her command to squeeze it out of me. But I baulked her by giving my mind no chance to dwell on what I knew. For by now I was sure she could read thoughts plainly....

  This sort of thing kept up until dinner was on the table, then as she ate she asked an abrupt question.

  “Do you happen to know Inspector Hilton’s Christian name?”

  I stared in astonishment. “Why, no. What on earth does it matter?”

  “It matters more than you will ever perhaps realize.” Then with that problematical reply I saw that distraught look come back briefly to her face. Suddenly she mastered it, aware of my gaze, and went on eating. Nor did she make any further reference to her baffling request....

  The moment the meal was over she switched on the television and sat watching intently to the news bulletin. I listened too, not much interested—until towards the end.

  “A curious form of murder by strangulation seems to have become an international mystery lately,” the announcer said. “First Boyd Harkness, the famous candy king, died that way: then Madame Elva Borini of Italy suffered the same fate yesterday. Today comes news of two more inexplicable murders—that of Henry Carson of London, a well-known sportsman, and Doctor Kenneth Cardew, an envoy to the British Government in Bermuda. Both men were found murdered in identical fashion, with cord wrapped three times round the neck and then knotted. The strange similarity of the cases is causing the police of the countries concerned to suspect an international gang....”

  Beryl switched off sharply and sat gazing into space. The only sign of emotion she showed was a slight twitching of her fingers. And me? Well, I wasn’t stunned because I had known it was coming. But what did get me was how it had been done. That reference to ‘thought wavelength’ she had made in the cellar kept recurring to me too. So much so I presently posed what was apparently an idle question.

  “Berry, I’ve often wondered if it is possible to kill people by thought. Ever consider that?”

  I don’t know why I asked the question: just that I was fed up and wanted to find her Achilles Heel. And it looked as though I’d managed it for every trace of color drained out of her cheeks and left her eyes burning at me like sunken holes.

  “Why do you want to know?” Her voice was like steel wire under sudden strain.

  I plunged. “Because you killed four people and there was no way to do it except by thought!” I shouted. “Do you take me for a fool, Berry? I don’t know how you do it—but I do know you have done it! You’ve had these people send you their four parts of their bloodstone, one of which I intercepted this morning. The others will be here! I know that! This morning you hypnotized me over a distance: and you have done it before. Now the police are on it, and they’ll get you. In God’s name, Berry, what are you trying to do?” I finished desperately. “I’m your husband aren’t I? Tell me!”

  “You fool,” she whispered, crouched back in her chair. “You contemptible, pitiable fool!”

  Then she jerked suddenly to her feet and swept out of the room, and went hurrying upstairs. I was left to brood, piecing together the fragments of what I knew already. I got nowhere, so at last I went to bed.

  I looked in on her and found Beryl asleep as though nothing in the world were different. But for me one thought was dinning through my brain: why had she wanted the Christian name of Inspector
Hilton...?

  * * * * * * *

  Next morning, immediately after breakfast, things happened. I was about to leave the house as usual when the postman arrived and rang noisily.

  He handed in two parcels to me—for I’d waved Mrs. Wilson away, being already at the door myself—and I had just time to see they were airmail and express delivery and stamped Bermuda and London respectively, when the door was pushed firmly aside and Inspector Hilton came in. With him was a police inspector and two plain clothes men.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Shaw,” Hilton said.

  I nodded unthinkingly to the breakfast room and he strode ahead of me. I’ll not easily forget the way Beryl looked up from the table when she saw the Inspector, the officials, and me holding two boxes. She looked as though dead for a moment, then with a supreme effort she mastered herself and stood up.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Peterson, New Scotland Yard,” said the inspector briefly, then glancing at the parcels, “we’ve been waiting to see if these came along. You will open them, please, in my presence. Here’s my authority....” He tossed down a form on the table.

  Beryl obeyed slowly as I put the parcels down. From each one she took a red jewel.

  “Complete,” she whispered, half to herself. “Complete!”

  “Final pieces of the bloodstone,” Hilton snapped. “And at the expense of the lives of the owners immediately afterwards—”

  “By a method only you can know about,” Peterson said curtly. “I have a warrant here for your arrest, Mrs. Shaw—for murder!”

  He held it out, granite-faced, but Beryl snatched it and threw it on the table, stared at us with blazing eyes.

  “You idiot!” she screamed, glaring at Peterson so fiendishly he fell back a pace. “Consummate idiot! What do I care for your silly warrants and authorities when I have a chosen task to perform? What do I—?” She stopped, calmed again. “Come with me, all of you,” she commanded. “You want an explanation it seems: you shall have it!”

  She led the way into the cellar depths and switched on the lights. Hilton, Peterson, and the others looked around them in wonder, then waited in grim silence while she brought forth the remainder of the fused jewel. The cellar flashed with cream radiances while she fused the final pieces, left all of us dazzled. At the end of it Beryl had in her hand the most perfect diamond-shaped gem I had ever seen.