A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “But we’re doing all right without phony stunts—”

  “We want it to continue, don’t we? The public’s fickle. Look at the way Kirk Evander’s old novels are selling; you couldn’t give ’em away six months ago. They could forget about Rufe Armlock in an awful hurry.”

  “But how do I go about it?”

  “Well, you know Captain Spencer pretty well. He can supply you with information. And you can pay a call on Borg Evander, for instance.”

  “Borg Evander? Who’s that?”

  “Kirk’s brother, who showed up when he was killed. He might know something. Look, I even brought you his address.” He dug into his wallet for a scrap of paper. “Dr. Borg Evander, 80 Wiffletree Road, Queens . . .”

  “All right,” I said glumly. “If I have to.”

  “You have to. Especially since I okayed the release this morning.”

  “You mean the papers will be printing this thing?”

  “I hope so.”

  “But then—what if the murderer sees it? What if he thinks I really know something?”

  “You’re not scared, are you?”

  “Who, me? Of course.”

  The next morning was bright and clear, and the sunshine helped dispel some of the murkiness that surrounded my errand. I went to pay a call on Borg Evander, who lived in a section of town I knew nothing about. After wandering about the streets, I finally found the old wood-frame house at the end of the unpaved street. It was isolated from the rest of the structures on the avenue, and from the moment I walked up to the front door, I knew it was just as well. The place smelled bad.

  I rang the doorbell, but heard no sound. Instead, a panel in the door slid open noiselessly, and a light shone in my eyes. I blinked, and swore I saw a lens staring at me. Then the panel slid shut hastily, and a voice said:

  “Please state your name and business.”

  I did, and the door opened. I started to say how-do-you-do to the man behind it, but there wasn’t any man. As the door shut behind me, I got the idea that Dr. Borg Evander was one of these gadgeteers.

  “Enter the door at the end of the hallway,” the voice said.

  I obeyed the instruction, but I gasped when I opened the door. There was nothing but air behind it, and a railed platform some four feet square.

  “Please step on the platform,” the voice told me.

  I stepped on. A motor whined, and the platform descended. It took me down about fifteen feet, to the floor of what was obviously a basement laboratory, crowded with scientific paraphernalia. It all looked very imposing and professional, but I couldn’t tell if the junk scattered around the place was intended to locate a cure for warts or repair television sets. My host was nowhere in sight.

  Then, out of a partitioned area at the end of the basement, out he came. He looked a lot like Kirk Evander, but he was easily five years older. He didn’t have Kirk’s hot-lamped eyes, either. They were brown and soft.

  “I hope you don’t mind the elevator,” he said gently. “I detest stairs. And my heart—”

  “I understand. I—er—gather you’re some kind of scientist, Dr. Evander?”

  “Ah,” was all he said.

  “Dr. Evander, I thought maybe you could help me. You see, your brother was a close friend of mine, and I’m interested in uncovering his murderer. I thought if we had a little talk—”

  “But I’ve already spoken to the police,” he said, looking bewildered. “And what did you tell them?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid. I hadn’t seen Kirk for almost eight years, until he showed up a few months ago. He was always rather distant towards me . . . Then, when I learned of his death, I came forward to claim his body. That’s really all I know.”

  It was a disappointment, but out of politeness, I chatted a few minutes longer. I was just about ready to leave when he said:

  “Would you care to look around? I’ve been working on several fascinating experiments. The police didn’t seem very interested, but you, a writer—”

  “Well,” I said, looking at my watch.

  “It won’t take very long. I don’t see people very often, Mr. Oswald. I suppose they consider me—odd.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, doctor. But you’ll have to admit. That odor—”

  “Odor? What odor?”

  “Well, frankly, Dr. Evander, there’s a smell in this house that’s a little hard to take.”

  “Oh, dear.” He put a finger on his mouth. “It’s been here so long I’ve become immune. It’s the acaphenimatin compound, probably, a new kind of plant food I’m working on. Or perhaps you’re smelling the sulfaborgonium.” He lowered his eyes shyly. “A chemical I have named after myself; a scientist’s vanity. It has a pungent odor, but only in formulation. I suppose I could stop making it, since it doesn’t seem to have any practical application.”

  “Well,” I laughed feebly, “it sure stinks, don’t it?”

  “Yes,” he answered vaguely. “Kirk used just that word. Yet he seemed infinitely more interested in the sulfaborgonium than any of my experiments.”

  I perked up at that.

  “Kirk was interested? Why?”

  “I really don’t know. He seemed utterly fascinated by its properties. As a matter of fact, he suggested a splendid use for it, if I could manufacture it in sufficient quantities. But that would be most impractical. The distillation process requires months, and produces only the smallest quantities from an exorbitant amount of raw materials.”

  “What use did he suggest?”

  “Oh, an esthetic one. Kirk was always the esthete of the family. He thought that the unsightly portions of public structures might be painted with the chemical. Bridges and things. In order to make them more attractive.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Well, since sulfaborgonium is an anti-pigment and a total barrier of light rays, it would naturally render these ugly portions invisible. However, I don’t think—”

  “Wait a minute. Would you go around that corner again, doctor?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Did you use the word invisible?”

  “Yes, of course. Once transmuted into chemical form, sulfaborgonium becomes a soluble fat, with a consistency of a—well, a facial cream, for instance.” He chuckled impetuously. “Yes, Kirk was very amusing about that. He called it Vanishing Cream.”

  I was staring at the doctor until my eyes were hurting.

  “Go on,” I said. “Tell me more.”

  “Well, because of its resistance to pigmentation, and its complete barrierization of light, the chemical renders anything it covers invisible. If I didn’t stain it with methyl blue, I wouldn’t be able to find it myself.” He chuckled again.

  My head was swimming, and I wasn’t sure if it was the odor or the wild words of Dr. Evander.

  “Let me get this straight. If you spread this stuff on something, that something can’t be seen?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Anything?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Even a human being?”

  The doctor looked puzzled.

  “I suppose so. But why would anybody want to be invisible?”

  “Dr. Evander,” I said, licking my lips, “you mean to say you can’t think of a single, solitary reason why somebody would want to be invisible? Have you ever heard of H. G. Wells? Have you ever been to the movies? Have you ever—” He wasn’t reacting, so I put it more simply. “Criminals, doctor! Just think about what an invisible criminal can accomplish! Or a spy! An army, doctor! Think of how many battles you could win with an invisible army! A plane, a tank, a ship—imagine those invisible! Big things, little things. Good men, bad men! A general or a peeping Tom or a detective . . .”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Dr. Evander murmured. “But now that you put it into words . . .” His face suddenly had more wrinkles than before. “But most of the things you mentioned are terrible things. Evil things—”

  “That’s
right,” I said grimly. “Take murder, for example. It would be pretty easy to kill somebody, and not get detected—if you were invisible. In a locked room for instance. All you have to do is walk in and kill somebody, then lock all the doors and windows. When the police finally break in, you walk out. Or on a stage, in front of thousands of witnesses—you could kill someone without the fear of being detected. The perfect crime.”

  “How awful!”

  “I think your brother might have realized these potentials, doctor. I’m not saying he used your chemical to commit the murders which took place. He might have made it available to someone else, however. And that someone may be responsible for all the deaths—including the death of Kirk Evander. And he’s free to kill again.”

  “It can’t be true!”

  “It must be true, doctor. If this stuff can do what you say—”

  Something was making my ankle itch. I reached down and scratched it. My hand touched something furry.

  “What the hell,” I said.

  “Oh,” Doctor Borg said, seeing my expression. “That must be Socrates.”

  He reached down and picked up an armful of nothing. Then he stroked the nothing tenderly.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “It’s Socrates, my cat. I rubbed the sulfaborgonium on her last week, as an experiment. To see if the substance was harmful to animals. But she appears to be perfectly all right.”

  I put my hand out, gingerly.

  Socrates was fine. When I pulled my hand away, there were three thin scratches on the skin.

  When I got home, I sat down and stared at the typewriter and talked to it like an old friend.

  “What would Rufe Armlock do in a case like this?” I said.

  The Remington didn’t answer, but the thought of Rufe Armlock conjured up another image. Why not go right to Captain Spencer, and tell him the story? It was simple and it was direct, so that’s what I did.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no, and that’s all I mean. I appreciate your ideas, Mr. Oswald, don’t misunderstand. But now you’ve gotten into fantasy—”

  “But what if I could prove the story? What if I prove this sulfaborgonium stuff exists?”

  “Can you?”

  “I wanted to bring you a sample. That’s one of the first things I asked Dr. Evander, but he said it was all gone. The last drop went on his cat. But it’s my theory that either Kirk Evander or an accomplice swiped some.”

  “Then you can’t really show me this sulfawhatever-you-call it? You only have his word for it?”

  “But there’s the cat,” I said anxiously. “The cat itself is proof that things can be made invisible. Animals. People!”

  “And you seriously think that an invisible man is walking around this minute, bumping off people?”

  “I do!”

  He screwed up his face and rapped his desk.

  “All right. You bring me the cat. Then I’ll follow through.”

  “Right. I’ll see Dr. Evander again tomorrow morning, and I’ll produce Socrates. Then I’ll leave it up to you to find this invisible murderer. I don’t envy you the job.”

  I saw Eileen that evening, and despite the fact that I wanted to keep my discovery quiet, I couldn’t help shooting off my mouth. That’s a problem of mine.

  She listened to me in evident amazement, and then she said something that had us both unnerved.

  “But Jeff! If this killer’s invisible, then he could be any place. He could be right in this room!”

  We both looked around, wide-eyed. Then I took an umbrella from the rack and started to parry it around the room. Eileen did the same, with a rolled-up magazine. It became a kind of crazy game after a while, and we both started to giggle. Pretty soon we were laughing hysterically, poking into the closets and under the chairs and out the window, and we finally collapsed in helpless mirth, hugging each other like a couple of nutty kids. It wasn’t the most romantic moment of our lives, but for some reason it seemed right. We got pretty silly and tender for a few minutes, and when we got up off the floor, we were engaged to be married. Funny how a thing like that happens, but that’s the way it was with us.

  We didn’t discuss the invisible murderer much after that. We had too much else to talk about.

  In the morning, I took the subway out to Queens and whistled merrily all the way. The world seemed like a pretty nice place, even underground.

  But when I rang the front doorbell of Dr. Borg Evander’s house, the little panel in the door didn’t slide back, and the television lens didn’t pop out to examine me. There was no response at all.

  I rattled the knob, but the door was locked.

  After five minutes of useless pounding, I went around to the other side of the house and tried to find another method of entry. There wasn’t any. The back door was bolted, and all the windows were tightly shut.

  I didn’t have any reason to get panicky. I hadn’t told the doctor of my intentions to return. He could have been out. And it was only natural for someone to lock up their house when they left it.

  Still, I didn’t like it.

  There was a luncheon counter at the northwest corner. I went there in the hope of finding a telephone booth; I found one. But the call I placed to the doctor’s home wasn’t answered. I came out and spoke to the counterman. He said:

  “Old Doc Evander? Why, he must be home. Never known the Doc to leave that nutty house of his. Has everything delivered. Regular hermit.”

  That settled it. I went back to the Evander house and began to pound on the front door. I almost busted my shoulder doing it, but I finally snapped whatever screwy kind of electronic lock held it closed. When it swung open, a bell began clanging a warning throughout the house, but I didn’t pay it any attention. I took the elevator platform down to the basement.

  Of course, my suspicions had been right. The old man was spread-eagled on the stone floor, and the man who had wanted him dead didn’t care about being neat. His head had been struck several times with something blunt and hard, and the result was sickening.

  I called the police, and then roamed the house, calling out:

  “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Here, Socrates. Here kitty, kitty . . .”

  But I knew it was useless. The invisible killer had been thorough, and now every speck of evidence was gone.

  I won’t say that Captain Spencer completely disbelieved my story. After the murder of Borg Evander, it almost seemed like corroboration. But he was a practical man, too, and he knew that my fantastic explanation for the murders—without tangible evidence—would only produce raised eyebrows and embarrassed coughs if he proposed the theory himself. It was all right for me to suggest the explanation—I was a fiction writer. But he was a detective of homicide, and his stock-in-trade was fact.

  So the theory remained private, among Captain Bill Spencer and myself and the girl I wanted to marry.

  It might have stayed that way forever, if Douglas Wharton, president of the publishing company, hadn’t gone loony.

  Now, Douglas Wharton is a kind of legendary figure in publishing. As a young man, running a hand-press in the back of a stationery shop, he had established a distinguished reputation for integrity and daring. His company was one of the first to recognize the growing American hunger for mystery stories, and he also published one of the first regular series of science-fiction novels. He established the Wharton Fellowships for new authors in both fields, the first of their kind. He was one of the first truly cooperative publishers in the history of the various author’s leagues.

  He was in his sixties when I joined the list of the Wharton Publishing Company, but you’ll rarely see a better-looking or more vigorous man of forty. He was a tall, slim guy, with movie-actor distinction in his handsome features and graying temples. He looked like a retired British major, but he could talk like a retired U. S. Army First Sergeant.

  I liked Douglas Wharton. So I wasn’
t happy to hear the rumors about him shifting his trolley.

  I asked Aaron Snow about it one day.

  “Seems to be some truth in it,” he said gravely. “The old man’s been acting pretty jumpy lately, and saying a lot of queer things. His friends have been trying to get him to take a vacation, but he won’t hear of it.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  Aaron shrugged. “I’m no psychiatrist. But from what I hear, he’s seeing things. Things nobody else sees. Hearing them, too. He gets mad as hell when the people around him deny it. Like last week . . .”

  “What happened?”

  “The way I get the story, there was a board meeting of the editors. Company policy, stuff like that. The Mystery Book Editor was making a report, when Wharton suddenly starts to curse—and if you’ve ever heard Doug Wharton curse, you know how fluent he can be. Everybody looks at him, and he accuses the man next to him of tickling his ankle.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right,” Aaron said sadly. “Raised hell about it. Swore up and down that his ankle was being tickled. The man next to him was Bosley Morse, Senior Editor of the Classical Department. White hair and whiskers, you know the guy, looks like Walt Whitman. Last guy in the world you’d accuse of tickling your ankle. But that’s what Wharton claimed.”

  I whistled.

  “Gee, that’s tough. Fine man like that.”

  “Yeah, it’s a shame, all right. Of course, he absolutely refuses to get medical attention. Some of his friends tried sneaking a headshrinker in to see him, pretending it was a social call. But Doug was too smart for ’em. Ticked off the doctor immediately, and threw him out of his house.”

  Maybe you can guess what I was thinking.

  “Listen, Aaron,” I said. “Can you get me an appointment to see Wharton?”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to see him. I only met him once, when we were signing the contracts. Maybe you could fix up a lunch date or something.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ve got an idea. It’s a nutty idea, but then most of my ideas are. I’d just like to see the man before I do anything about it.”

  “Well, if that’s what you really want. I suppose I can arrange it through the Mystery Editor.” He narrowed his eyes shrewdly. “You got something up your sleeve, Jeff?”