September 1930

by Unknown

  I heard a footstep. "Off, Chief! I'll call you later!"

  I clicked off summarily. The little grid was under my shirt when the mine commander rejoined me.

  * * * * *

  For another half hour or to I hovered about the smelter house. A treasure of quicksilver ingots here? I mentioned it casually to my companion. He shot me a sharp glance.

  "Spawn has told you that?"

  "I heard it."

  "His business. We do not talk of that. Never can I tell what Spawn will choose to take offense at."

  We rambled upon other subjects. Later, he said, "We work not at night. But Spawn, he is here often at night, with his friend, the Señor Perona."

  That caught my attention. "I met Perona this morning," I said quickly. "Is he a partner of Spawn's?"

  "If he is so, I never was told it. But much he is here--at night."

  "Why at night?"

  The fellow really knew nothing. Or if he did, he was diplomatic enough not to jeopardize his post by babbling of it to me. He said:

  "Perona is Spawn's friend. Why not? His daughter to marry: that will make him a son-in-law." He laughed. "An old fool, but not such a fool either. Spawn is rich."

  "His daughter. Has he a daughter?"

  "The little Jetta. You haven't seen her? Well, that is not strange. Spawn keeps her very hidden. A mystery about it: all Nareda talks, but no one knows; and Spawn does not like questions."

  Spawn abruptly joined us! He came from the black shadows of the lurid smelter room. Had he heard us discussing Jetta? I wondered.

  CHAPTER V - Mysterious Meeting

  "Ah, Grant--have you enjoyed yourself?" He dismissed his subordinate. "I was detained. Sorry."

  He was smoothly imperturbable. "Have you seen everything? Quite a little plant I have here? We shut down early to-day. I will make ready to close."

  I followed him about while he arranged for the termination of the day's activities. The clatter of the smelter house was presently still; the men departing. Spawn and I were the last to leave, save for the eight men who were the mine's night guards. They were stalwart, silent fellows, armed with electronic needle projectors.

  The lights of the mine went low until they were mere pencil points of blue illumination in the gloom. The eery look of the place was intensified by the darkness and silence of the abnormally early nightfall. The fantastic crags stood dark with formless shadow.

  Spawn stopped to speak to one of the guards. The men wore a gold-trimmed, but now dirty, white linen uniform, wilted by the heat--the uniform of Nareda's police. I remarked it to him.

  "The government lent me the men," Spawn explained. "Of an ordinary time I have only one guard."

  "But this then, is not an ordinary time?" I hinted.

  He looked at me sharply. And upon sudden impulse, I added:

  "President Markes said something about you having a treasure here. Radiumized quicksilver."

  It was evidently Spawn's desire to appear thoroughly frank with me. He laughed. "Well, then, if Markes has told you, then might I not as well admit it? The treasure is here, indeed yes. Will you like to see it?"

  * * * * *

  He led me into a little strong room adjoining the smelter coil-rectifiers. He flashed his hand searchlight. On the floor, piled crosswise, were small moulded bars of refined quicksilver--dull, darkened silver ingots of this world's most precious metal.

  "Quite a treasure, Grant, here to-night. See, it is radiumized."

  He snapped off his torch. In the darkness the little bars glowed irridescent.

  "To-morrow I will divide with our Nareda government. One-third for them. And my own share I will export: to Great New York, this shipment. Already I have the order for it."

  He added calmly, "The duty is high, Grant. Too bad your big New York market is protected by so large a duty. With my cost of production--these accursed Lowland workmen who demand so much for their labor, and a third of all I produce taken by Nareda--there is not much in it for me."

  He had re-lighted the room. I could feel his eyes on me, but I said nothing. It was obvious to me now that he knew I was a government customs agent.

  I said, "This certainly interests me, friend Spawn. I'll tell you why some other time."

  We exchanged significant glances, both of us smiling.

  "Well can I guess it, young Grant. So here is my treasure. Without the duty I would soon be wealthy. Chut! Why should I roll in a pity for myself? There is a duty and I am an honest man, so I pay it."

  I said, "Aren't you afraid to leave this stored here?" I knew that this pile of ingots--the quicksilver in its radiumized form--was worth four or five hundred thousand dollars in American gold-coin at the very least.

  * * * * *

  Spawn shrugged. "Who would attack it? But of course I will be glad to be rid of it. It is a great responsibility--even though it carries international insurance, to protect my and the Nareda Government share."

  He was sealing up the heavy barred portals of the little strong-room. There was an alarm-detector, connected with the office of Nareda's police commander. Spawn set the alarm carefully.

  "I have every safeguard, Grant. There is really no danger." He added, as though with sudden thought. "Except possibly one--a depth bandit named De Boer. Ever you have heard of him?"

  "Yes. I have."

  We climbed into Spawn's small automatic vehicle. The lights of the mine faded behind us as we coasted the winding road down to the village.

  "De Boer," said Spawn. "A fellow who lives by his wits in the depths. Near here, perhaps: who knows? They say he has many followers--fifty--a hundred, perhaps--outlaws: a cut-belly band it must be."

  "Didn't he once take a hand in Nareda's politics?" I suggested.

  Spawn guffawed. "That is so. He was once what they called a patriot here. He thought he might be made President. But Markes ran him out. Now he is a bandit. I have believe that American mail-ship which sank last year in the cauldron north of the Nares Sea--you remember how it was attacked by bandits?--I have always believe that was De Boer's band."

  * * * * *

  We rolled back to Nareda. Spawn's manner had again changed. He seemed even more friendly than before. More at his ease with me. We had supper, and smoked together in his living room for half an hour afterward. But my thoughts were more on Jetta than on her father. There was still no evidence of her about the premises. Ah, if I only had known what had taken place there at Spawn's that afternoon while I was at the mine!

  Soon after supper Spawn yawned. "I think I shall go to bed." His glance was inquiring. "What are you going to do?"

  I stood up. "I'll go to bed, too. Markes wants to see me early in the morning. You'll be there, Spawn?"

  "Yes. We will go together."

  It was still no more than eight o'clock in the evening. Spawn followed me to my bedroom, and left me at its door.

  "Sleep well. I will call you in time."

  "Thanks, Spawn."

  I wondered if there were irony in his voice as he said good night. No one could have told.

  * * * * *

  I did not go to bed. I sat listening to the silence of my room and the garden, and Spawn's retreating footsteps. He had said he was sleepy, but nevertheless I presently heard him across the patio. He was apparently in the kitchen, cleaning away our meal, to judge by the rattling of his pans. It was as yet not much after hour eight of the evening. The hours before my tryst with Jetta seemed an interminable time to wait. She might not come, though, I was afraid, until midnight.

  At all events I felt that I had some hours yet. And it occurred to me that the evening was not yet too far advanced for me to call upon Perona. He lived not far from here, I had learned. I wanted to see this beribboned old Minister of Nareda's Internal Affairs.

  I would use as my excuse a desire to discuss further the possibility of smuggler being here in Nareda.

  I put on my hat and a light jacket, verified that my dirk was readily accessible and sealed up my room. Spa
wn apparently was still in the kitchen. I got out of the house, I felt sure, without him being aware of it.

  * * * * *

  The Nareda streets were quiet. There was a few pedestrians, and none of them paid much attention to me. It was no more than ten minutes walk to Perona's home.

  His house was set back from the road, surrounded by luxurious vegetation. There was a gate in front of the garden, and another, a hundred feet or to along a small alleyway which bordered the ground to my left. I was about to enter the front gate when sight of a figure passing under the garden foliage checked me. It was a man, evidently coming from the house and headed toward the side gate. He went through a shaft of light that slanted from one of the lower windows of the house.

  Perona! I was sure it was he. His slight figure, with a gay, tri-cornered hat. A short tasseled cloak hanging from his shoulders. He was alone; walking fast. He evidently had not seen me. I crouched outside the high front wall, and through its lattice bars I saw him reach the side gate, open it swiftly, pass through, and close it after him. There was something furtive about his manner, for all he was undisguised. I decided to follow him.

  The front street fortunately was deserted at the moment. I waited long enough for him to appear. But he did not; and when I ran to the alley corner--chancing bumping squarely into him--I saw him far down its dim, narrow length where it opened into the back street which bordered his grounds to the rear. He turned to the left and shot a swift glance up the alley, which I anticipated, provided for by drawing back. When I looked again, he was gone.

  * * * * *

  I have had some experience at playing the shadow. But it was not easy here along the almost deserted and fairly bright Nareda streets. Perona was walking swiftly down the slope toward the outskirts of the village where it bordered upon the Nares Sea. For a time I thought he was headed for the landing field, but at a cross-path he turned sharply to the right, away from the field, whose sheen of lights I could now see down the rocky defile ahead of me. There was nothing but broken, precipitous rocky country ahead of him, into which this path he had taken was winding. What could Perona, a Minister, be engaged in, wandering off alone into this black, deserted region?

  It was black indeed, by now. The village was soon far behind us. A storm was in the night air; a wind off the sea; solid black clouds overhead blotted out the moon and stars. The crags and buttes and gullies of this tumbled area loomed barely visible about me. There were times when only my feel of the path under my feet kept me from straying, to fall into a ravine or crevice.

  I prowled perhaps two hundred yards behind Perona. He was using a tiny hand-flash now; it bobbed and winked in the darkness ahead, vanishing sometimes when a curve in the path hid him, or when he plunged down into a gully and up again. I had no search-beam. Nor would I have dared use one: Perona could too obviously have seen that someone was following him.

  There was half a mile of this, I think, though it seemed interminable. I could hear the sea, rising with the wind, pounding against the rocks to my left. Then, a distance ahead, I saw lights moving. Perona's--and others. Three or four of them. Their combined glow made a radiance which illumined the path and rocks. I could see the figures of several men whom Perona had joined. They stood a moment and then moved off. To the right a ragged cliff wall towered the path. The spots of light bobbed toward it. I caught the vague outline of a huge broken opening, like a cave mouth in the cliff. The lights were swallowed by it.

  I crept cautiously forward.

  CHAPTER VI - Ether-wave Eavesdropping

  I had thought it was a cavern mouth into which the men had disappeared, but it was not. I reached it without any encounter. It loomed above me, a great archway in the cliff--an opening fifty feet high and equally as broad. And behind it was a roofless cave--a sort of irregularly circular bowl, five hundred feet across its broken, bowlder-strewn, caked-ooze floor.

  I crouched in the blackness under the archway. The moon had risen and its light filtered with occasional shafts through the swift-flying black clouds overhead. The scene was brighter. It was dark in the archway, but a glow of moonlight in the bowl beyond showed me its tumbled floor and the precipitous, eroded walls, like a crater-rim, which encircled it.

  The men whom Perona had met were across the bowl near its opposite side. I could see the group of them, five hundred feet from me, by a little moonlight that was on them; also by the sheen from the spots of their hand-lights. Four or five men, and Perona. I thought I distinguished the aged Minister sitting on a rock, and before him a huge giant man's figure striding up and down. Perona seemed talking vehemently: the men were listening; the giant paused occasionally in his pacing to fling a question.

  All this I saw with my first swift glance. My attention was drawn from the men to an object near them. The nose of a flyer showed between two upstanding crags on the floor of the valley. Only its forward horizontal propellers and the tip of its cabin and landing gear were visible, but I could guess that it was a fair-sized ship.

  The men were too far away for me to hear them. Could I get across the floor of the bowl without discovery? It did not seem so. The accursed moonlight became stronger every moment. Then I saw a guard--a dark figure of a man showing just inside the archway, some seventy feet from me. He was leaning against a rock, facing my way. In his hands was a thick-barreled electronic projector.

  I could not advance: that was obvious. The moonlight lay in a clear clean patch beyond the archway. The guard stood at its edge.

  * * * * *

  A minute or two had passed. Perona was still talking vehemently. I was losing it: not a word was audible. Yet I felt that if I could hear Perona now, much that Hanley and I wanted to learn would be made clear to us. My little microphone receiver could be adjusted for audible air vibrations. I crouched and held it cautiously above my head with its face, like a listening ear, turned toward the distant men. My single-vacuum amplification brought up the sound until their voices sounded like whispers murmured in my ear-grids.

  "De Boer, listen to me--"

  Perona's voice. They must have been chance words spoken loudly. It was all I could hear, save tantalizing, unintelligible murmurs.

  So this was De Boer, the bandit! The big fellow pacing before Perona. I wanted infinitely more, now, to hear what was being said.

  I thought of Hanley. There might be a way of handling this.

  I had to murmur very softly. I was hidden in these shadows from the guard's sight, but he was close enough to hear my normal voice. I chanced it. A wind was sucking through the archway with an audible whine: the guard might not hear me.

  "X. 2. AY."

  The sorter's desk. He came in. I murmured Hanley's rating. "Rush. Danger. Special."

  It went swiftly through. Hanley, thank Heaven, was at his desk.

  * * * * *

  I plugged in my little image finder; held it over my head; turned it slowly. I whispered:

  "Look around, Chief. See where I am? Near Nareda; couple of miles out. Followed Perona; he met these men.

  "The big one is De Boer, the depth bandit. I can't hear what they're saying--but I can send you their voice murmurs."

  "Amplify them all you can. Relay them up," Hanley ordered.

  I caught Perona's murmurs again; I swung them through my tiny transformers and off my transmitter points into the ether.

  "Hear them, Chief?"

  "Yes. I'll try further amplification."

  It was what I had intended. Hanley's greater power might be able to amplify those murmurs into audible strength.

  "I'm getting them, Phil."

  He swung them back to me. Grotesquely distorted, blurred with tube-hum and interference crackle, they roared in my ear-grids so loudly that I saw the nearby guard turn his head as though startled. Listening....

  But evidently he concluded it was nothing.

  I cut down the volume. Hanley switched in.

  "By God. Phil! This--"

  "Off, Chief! Let me hear, too!"

&
nbsp; * * * * *

  He cut away. Those distorted voices! They came from Perona and the bandits to me across this five hundred foot moonlit bowl; from me, thirteen hundred miles up to Hanley's instruments; and back to me once more. But the words, most of them, now were distinguishable.

  Perona's voice: "I tell it to you. De Boer ... and a good chance for you to make the money."

  "But will they pay?"

  "Of course they will pay. Big. A ransom princely."

  "And why, Perona? Why princely? Who is this fellow--so important?"

  "He is with rich business men, I tell to you."

  "A private citizen?"

  "... And a private citizen, of a surety. Fool! Have you come to be a coward, De Boer?"

  "Pah!"

  "Well then I tell you it is a lifetime chance. All of it I have arranged. If he was a government agent, that would be very different, for they are very keen, this administration of the American government, to protect their agents. But their private citizens--it is a scandal! Do you not ever pick the newscasters' reports, De Boer? Has it not been a scandal that this administration does very little for its citizens abroad?"

  "And you want to get rid of this fellow? Why, Perona?"

  "That is not your concern. The ransom is to be all yours. Make away with him--in the depths somewhere. Demand your ransom. Fifty thousand gold-standards! Demand it of me. Of Nareda!"

  "And you will pay it?"

  "I promise it. Nareda will pay it--and Nareda will collect the ransom from the American capitalists. Very easy."

  His voice fell lower. "Between us, you will get the ransom money from Nareda--and then kill your prisoner if you like. Call it an accident; what matter? And dead men are silent men, De Boer. I will see that no real pursuit is made after you."

  * * * * *

  They were talking about me! It was obvious. Questions rushed at me. Perona, planning with this bandit to abduct me. Hold me for ransom. Or kill me! But Perona knew that I was not a private citizen. He was lying to De Boer, to persuade him.

  Why this attack upon me? Was Spawn in on it? Why were they so anxious to get rid of me? Because of Jetta? Or because I was dangerous, prying into their smuggling activities. Or both?