Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  Then Jenks, the engineer who knew his mathematics, put two and two together. It made four, of course.

  "Listen, Linane," he said to his co-worker: "this fiddler is crazier than a flock of cuckoos. If he can crack crockery with violin sound vibrations, is it not possible, by carrying the vibrations to a much higher power, that he could crack a pile of stone, steel, brick and cement, like the Colossus?"

  "Possible, but hardly probable. Still," Linane mused, "when you think about it, and put two and two together.... Let's go after him and see what he is doing now."

  Both jumped for their coats and hats. As they fared forth, Jenks cinched his argument:

  "If a madman takes delight in breaking glassware with a vibratory wave or vibration, how much more of a thrill would he get by crashing a mountain?"

  "Wild, but unanswerable," said Linane.

  * * * * *

  Jenks had been calling on the Mad Musician at his country place. "He had a studio in the Colossus," he reminded Linane. "He must have re-opened somewhere else in town. I wonder where."

  "Musicians are great union men," said Linane. "Phone the union."

  Teddy Jenks did, but the union gave the last known town address as the Colossus.

  "He would remain in the same district around Times Square," reasoned Jenks. "Let's page out the big buildings and see if he is not preparing to crash another one."

  "Fair enough," said Linane, who was too busy with the problem at hand to choose his words.

  Together the engineers started a canvass of the big buildings in the theatrical district. After four or five had been searched without result they entered the 30-story Acme Theater building.

  Here they learned that the Mad Musician had leased a four-room suite just a few days before. This suite was on the fifteenth floor, just half way up in the big structure.

  They went to the manager of the building and frankly stated their suspicions. "We want to enter that suite when the tenant is not there," they explained, "and we want him forestalled from entering while we are examining the premises."

  "Hadn't we better notify the police?" asked the building manager, who had broken out in a sweat when he heard the dire disaster which might be in store for the stately Acme building.

  "Not yet," said Linane. "You see, we are not sure: we have just been putting two and two together."

  "We'll get the building detective, anyway," insisted the manager.

  "Let him come along, but do not let him know until we are sure. If we are right we will find a most unusual infernal machine," said Linane.

  * * * * *

  The three men entered the suite with a pass-key. The detective was left outside in the hall to halt anyone who might disturb the searchers. It was as Jenks had thought. In an inner room they found a diabolical machine--a single string stretched across two bridges, one of brass and one of wood. A big horsehair bow attached to a shaft operated by a motor was automatically sawing across the string. The note resulting was evidently higher than the range of the human ear, because no audible sound resulted. It was later estimated that the destructive note was several octaves higher than the highest note on a piano.

  The entire machine was enclosed in a heavy wire-net cage, securely bolted to the floor. Neither the string or bow could be reached. It was evidently the Mad Musician's idea that the devilish contrivance should not be reached by hands other than his own.

  How long the infernal machine had been operating no one knew, but the visitors were startled when the building suddenly began to sway perceptibly. Jenks jumped forward to stop the machine but could not find a switch.

  "See if the machine plugs in anywhere in a wall socket!" he shouted to Linane, who promptly began examining the walls. Jenks shouted to the building manager to phone the police to clear the streets around the big building.

  "Tell the police that the Acme Theater building may crash at any moment," he instructed.

  The engineers were perfectly cool in face of the great peril, but the building manager lost his head completely and began to run around in circles muttering: "Oh, my God, save me!" and other words of supplication that blended into an incoherent babel.

  Jenks rushed to the man, trying to still his wild hysteria.

  The building continued to sway dangerously.

  * * * * *

  Jenks looked from a window. An enormous crowd was collecting, watching the big building swinging a foot out of plumb like a giant pendulum. The crowd was growing. Should the building fall the loss of life would be appalling. It was mid-morning. The interior of the building teemed with thousands of workers, for all floors above the third were offices.

  Teddy Jenks turned suddenly. He heard the watchman in the hall scream in terror. Then he heard a body fall. He rushed to the door to see the Mad Musician standing over the prostrate form of the detective, a devilish grin on his distorted countenance.

  The madman turned, saw Jenks, and started to run. Jenks took after him. Up the staircase the madman rushed toward the roof. Teddy followed him two floors and then rushed out to take the elevators. The building in its mad swaying had made it impossible for the lifts to be operated. Teddy realized this with a distraught gulp in his throat. He returned to the stairway and took up the pursuit of the madman.

  The corridors were beginning to fill with screaming men and wailing girls. It was a sight never to be forgotten.

  Laboriously Jenks climbed story after story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish visage. He jumped for him.

  The madman grasped him and lifted him up to the top of the wall as a cat might have lifted a mouse. Both men were breathing heavily as a result of their 15-story climb.

  The madman tried to throw Teddy Jenks to the street below. Teddy clung to him. The two battled desperately as the building swayed.

  The dense crowd in the street had caught sight of the two men fighting on the narrow coping, and the shout which rent the air reached the ears of Jenks.

  * * * * *

  The mind of the engineer was still working clearly, but a wild fear gripped his heart. His strength seemed to be leaving him. The madman pushed him back, bending his spine with brute strength. Teddy was forced to the narrow ledge that had given the two men footing. The fingers of the madman gripped his throat.

  He was dimly conscious that the swaying of the building was slowing down. His reason told him that Linane had found the wall socket and had stopped the sawing of the devil's bow on the engine of hell.

  He saw the madman draw a big knife. With his last remaining strength he reached out and grasped the wrist above the hand which held the weapon. In spite of all he could do he saw the madman inching the knife nearer and nearer his throat.

  Grim death was peering into the bulging eyes of Teddy Jenks, when his engineering knowledge came to his rescue. He remembered the top stories of the Acme building were constructed with a step of ten feet in from the street line, for every story of construction above the 24th floor.

  "If we fall," he reasoned, "we can only fall one story." Then he deliberately rolled his own body and the weight of the madman, who held him, over the edge of the coping. At the same time he twisted the madman's wrist so the point of the knife pointed to the madman's body.

  There was a dim consciousness of a painful impact. Teddy had fallen underneath, but the force of the two bodies coming together had thrust the knife deep into the entrails of the Mad Musician.

  Clouds which had been collecting in the sky began a splattering downpour. The storm grew in fury and lightning tore the heavens, while thunder boomed and crackled. The rain began falling in sheets.

  * * * * *

  This served to revive the unconscious Teddy. He painfully withdrew his body from under that of the madman. The falling rain, stained with the blood of the Mad Musician, trickled over the edge of the b
uilding.

  Teddy dragged himself through a window and passed his hand over his forehead, which was aching miserably. He tried to get to his feet and fell back, only to try again. Several times he tried and then, his strength returning, he was able to walk.

  He made his way to the studio where he had left Linane and found him there surrounded by police, reporters and others. The infernal machine had been rendered harmless, but was kept intact as evidence.

  Catching sight of Teddy, Linane shouted with joy. "I stopped the damned thing," he chuckled, like a pleased schoolboy. Then, observing Teddy's exhausted condition he added:

  "Why, you look like you have been to a funeral!"

  "I have," said Teddy. "You'll find that crazy fiddler dead on the twenty-ninth story. Look out the window of the thirtieth story," he instructed the police, who had started to recover the body. "He stabbed himself. He is either dead or dying."

  It proved that he was dead.

  No engineering firm is responsible for the actions of a madman. So the Muller Construction Company was given a clean bill of health.

  * * * * *

  Jenks and Elaine Linane were with the girl's father in his study. They were asking for the paternal blessing.

  Linane was pretending to be hard to convince.

  "Now, my daughter," he said, "this young man takes $500 of my good money by sounding me out, as he calls it. Then he comes along and tries to take my daughter away from me. It is positively high-handed. It dates back to the football game--"

  "Daddy, dear, don't be like that!" said Elaine, who was on the arm of his chair with her own arms around him.

  "I tell you, Elaine, this dates back to the fall of 1927."

  "It dates back to the fall of Eve," said Elaine. "When a girl finds her man, no power can keep him from her. If you won't give me to Teddy Jenks, I'll elope with him."

  "Well, all right then. Kiss me," said Linane as he turned towards his radio set.

  "One and one makes one," said Teddy Jenks.

  Every engineer knows his mathematics.

  * * *

  Contents

  WEREWOLF OF THE SAHARA

  By G. G. Pendarves

  A tremendous tale, depicted against the background of the great desert, about the evil Arab sheykh El Shabur, and dreadful occult forces that were unleashed in a desperate struggle for the soul of a beautiful girl

  The three of them were unusually silent that night over their after-dinner coffee. They were camping outside the little town of Sollum on the Libyan coast of North Africa. For three weeks they had been delayed here en route for the Siwa oasis. Two men and a girl.

  "So we really start tomorrow," Merle Anthony blew a cloud of smoke toward the glittering night sky. "I'm almost sorry. Sollum's been fun. And I've done two of the best pictures I ever made here."

  "Was that why you burned them up yesterday?" her cousin, Dale Fleming, inquired in his comfortable pleasant voice.

  The girl's clear pallor slowly crimsoned. "Dale! What a——"

  "It's all right, Merle," Gunnar Sven interrupted her. "Dale's quite right. Why pretend this delay has done you any good? And it's altogether my fault. I found that out today in the market. Overheard some Arabs discussing our expedition to Siwa."

  "Your fault!" Merle's beautiful face, and eyes gray as a gull's wing, turned to him. "Why, you've simply slaved to get the caravan ready."

  Gunnar got to his feet and walked out to the verge of the headland on which they were camped. Tall, straight as a pine he stood.

  The cousins watched him; the girl with trouble and perplexity, the man more searchingly. His eyes, under straight upper lids, flatly contradicted the rest of his appearance. He was very fat, with fair hair and smooth unlined face despite his forty years. A sort of Pickwickian good humor radiated from him. Dale Fleming's really great intellectual power showed only in those three-cornered heavily-lidded eyes of his.

  "Why did you give me away?" Merle demanded.

  His round moon face beamed on her.

  "Why bluff?" he responded.

  "Snooping about as usual. Why don't you go and be a real detective?" she retorted crossly.

  He gave a comfortable chuckle, but his eyes were sad. It was devilishly hard to watch her falling for this Icelander. Ever since his parents had adopted her—an orphan of six—she had come first in Dale's affections. His love was far from Platonic. Gunnar Sven was a fine creature, but there was something wrong. Some mystery shadowed his life. What it was, Dale was determined to discover.

  "Truth will out, my child! The natives are in terror of him. You know it as well as I do! They're all against helping you and me because he's our friend."

  "Stop being an idiot. No one could be afraid of Gunnar. And he's particularly good with natives."

  "Yes. He handles them well. I've never seen a young 'un do it better."

  "Well, then?"

  "There's something queer about him. These Arabs know it. We know it. It's about two months now since he joined forces with us. Just after my mother decamped and left us in Cairo. The cable summoning her home to Aunt Sue's death-bed arrived Wednesday, May 3rd. She sailed May 5th. Gunnar Sven turned up May 6th."

  "All right. I'm not contradicting you. It's never any use."

  "You refused to wait for Mother's return in Cairo, according to her schedule."

  "Well! Cairo! Everyone paints Cairo and the Nile. I wanted subjects that every five-cent tourist hadn't raved over."

  "You wanted Siwa Oasis. Of all God-forsaken dangerous filthy places! And in the summer——"

  "You know you're dying to see the oasis too," she accused. "Just trying to save your face as my guardian and protector. Hypocrite!"

  He roared with laughter. The Arab cook and several other servants stopped singing round their cooking-pots to grin at the infectious sound.

  "Touche! I'd sacrifice my flowing raven locks to go to Siwa. But"—his face grew surprizingly stern—"about Gunnar. Why does he take such enormous pains not to tell us the name of the man he's been working for?"

  "I've never asked him."

  "I haven't in so many words, of course. But I've led him up to the fence over and over again. He's steadily refused it. With good reason."

  "Well?"

  "He works for an Arab. A sheykh. A man notorious from Morocco to Cairo. His nickname's Sheykh El Afrit. The Magician! His real name is Sheykh Zura El Shabur."

  "And what's so earth-shaking about that?" asked Merle, patting a dark curl into place behind her ear.

  "He's a very—bad—hat! Black Magic's no joke in this country. This Sheykh El Shabur's gone far. Too far."

  "I'm going to talk to Gunnar. He'll tell me. It's fantastic. Gunnar and Black Magic kideed!"

  Dale watched her, amused and touched. How she loathed subtleties and mysteries and tangled situations!

  "She'd waltz up to a lion and pull its whiskers if anyone told her they were false. As good at concealment as a searchlight."

  Gunnar turned from the sea as Merle walked purposefully in his direction. He stood beside her—mountain pine overshadowing a little silver birch.

  "H-m-m!" Dale threw away a freshly lighted cigarette and took another. "Merle and I wouldn't suggest that. More like Friar Tuck and Maid Marian."

  He was startled to see Gunnar suddenly leap and turn. The man looked as if he'd had a tremendous shock. He stood peering across the wastelands stretching eastward, frozen into an attitude of utmost horror.

  Dale ran across to Merle. She broke from his detaining hand and rushed to Gunnar's side.

  "What is it? What do you see? Gunnar! Answer me, Gunnar!"

  His tense muscles relaxed. He sighed, and brushed a hand across his eyes and wet forehead.

  "He's found me. He's coming. I had hoped never——"

  "Who? What are you talking about?"

  She shook his arm in terror at his wild look and words.

  "He said I was free! Free! I wouldn't have come near you if I'd known he lied. Now I've brought
him into your life. Merle! Forgive me!"

  He took her hands, kissed them frantically, then turned to Dale with burning haste and fairly pushed him away.

  "Go! Go! Go! Now—before he comes. Leave everything! Ride for your lives. He'll force me to... go! Go!"

  "Ma yarudd! What means this, Gunnar—my servant?"

  The deep guttural voice seemed to come up from the bowels of the earth. The three turned as if a bomb had exploded. A figure loomed up not ten feet away. Merle stared with wide startled eyes. A minute ago the level wasteland had shown bare, deserted. How had this tall Arab approached unseen?

  Gunnar seemed to shrink and wither. His face was tragic. The newcomer fixed him for a long moment in silence, staring him down.

  "What means this, Gunnar, my servant?" Once more the words vibrated through the still night.

  The Icelander made a broken ineffectual movement of his hands, and began to speak. His voice died away into low, vague murmurings.

  "For this you shall account to me later," promised the tall Arab.

  He strode forward. His black burnoose rippled and swayed about him. Its peaked hood was drawn close. A long face with pointed black beard, proud curving nose, and eyes dark and secret as forest pools gleamed beneath the hood.

  Merle shrank back. Her fingers clutched Gunnar's. They were cold and limp in her grasp.

  Dale leaned forward, peering into the Arab's face as a connoisseur examines an etching of rare interest.

  "You speak very good English, my friend. Or is it enemy?"

  The whole demeanor of the Arab changed. His white teeth flashed. He held out welcoming hands, clasped Dale's in his own, and bowed low to the girl. He turned last to the Icelander.