by Earl
“Now, Wickersham . . . . I’m going to kill you, because I could never see you get the punishment you deserve in a court-of-law, and no one will be the wiser if I take the law into my own hands. But I’m going to do one thing that will safeguard me from your vengeance JUST IN CASE you don’t die! That was something you forgot when you tried to kill me.”
Wickersham sat with a deathlike silence and immobility. Even the repeated threats of death failed to stir him. He had suffered a shock that had deprived him of any sort of voluntary movement.
“Now listen carefully, Wickersham. I was a peaceable man. I loved my work. I loved my way of living. I was happy and contented. Then you came with your cruel thoughts of revenge against the man who had been the victim of circumstances in your sentence to prison, subjected me to unspeakable torment; and there sprang up in me a spark of something that had not been there before! I DETERMINED TO KILL TO AVENGE!”
LOCKHART stood over the pale man like an executioner, his face a seething mask of fierce murder-lust. His sensitive nostrils quivered and the finger on the trigger trembled, as he thundered those words of death at the cowering Wickersham. Then he suddenly changed. He deflated from his tempestuous, emotional storm like a balloon with the valve open. In a much quieter voice he continued:
“But now, Wickersham, when I have you in my power, my conscience is at work; my better nature is fighting within me. While my fingers itch to pull the trigger and send you to death, my inborn mercifulness tells me to have that pity that you had none of. Wickersham, I’m going to give you a one to one chance of life. Now . . . . never mind interrupting . . . . listen to me till I’m done. I’m going to prepare two solutions: one of potassium cyanide and one of pure water. I’m going to give you your choice . . . . death or life! If you choose the water, you are free to live. If you choose the other . . . . . finis.
“Now, one more thing. I have here a statement written out that you have attempted to murder me. You will sign at the bottom. If you live you will have no further chance to kill me, because that paper, signed with your name, and deposited in my personal box at my bank, will immediately point you out as the murderer, if I am found dead. You will sign this paper because you have no choice. If you refuse, I will shoot you on the spot, as I fully intended to do when I first came in here. It is just my extreme compassion, my desire to do what is fair, that is giving you this one chance to live. Sign!”
Lockhart drew forth a paper, stating that Raymond Wickersham had once attempted the life of George Lockhart, and that if the latter be found dead, the former is to be questioned in that connection. With his free hand, Wickersham signed, his trembling fingers hardly able to hold the pen Lockhart handed him.
That done, Lockhart pocketed the paper. Then he carefully blindfolded Wickersham. In a few minutes he had prepared the two solutions and placed them on a porcelain plate. He removed the blindfold.
“Here, Wickersham, are two solutions: one of dilute potassium cyanide which kills in thirty seconds, and the other of plain water. The former is so dilute that you will not be able to detect its characteristic odor, but it is concentrated enough to kill. Take your pick and gulp it down in one gulp, for, by God, if you try to taste of it, or if you throw it away, I’ll send a bullet through your brain the next instant! This is the chance you never gave me . . . . life or death . . . . you will immediately know which you’ve got, after you swallow it, by the characteristic taste of the cyanide.”
Lockhart stood in front of Wickersham with the plate. The two beakers looked exactly alike, filled with clear, colorless liquids. With his free hand clenched tightly on the arm of the chair so that the knuckles showed white, Wickersham shifted his eyes from one to the other. Which should he take? Which held the deadly poison, which the pure water? Lockhart looked on with a grim smile.
Wickersham stretched forth a shaky hand and then drew it back in anguish. “I can’t, Lockhart . . . . I can’t,” he moaned. All the coward in him sprang to the front in this crucial moment.
“CHOOSE!” thundered Lockhart. “If you don’t choose in ten seconds, I’ll shoot!” He turned his eyes on the wrist-watch on the hand holding the gun.
Five long seconds passed before Wickersham put forth a hand. After a split second of hesitation, he chose one beaker and brought it slowly to his blue lips. The liquid seemed to dance in the violet light, mocking him.
Lockhart waved his pistol suggestively.
In a sudden, savage gesture, Wickersham tossed the liquid down his throat.
The stricken man’s eyes rolled, clouded, and closed. His body went limp and his head sagged forward.
“Whew!” said Lockhart out loud as he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped a damp forehead. “I’m glad that’s over! I couldn’t have stood that much longer. If he had called my bluff——? Kill him? Couldn’t he see it was all an act on my part? I just wanted to see him suffer a small part of the way I suffered at his hands. Ha! ha! ha! Now look at him, fainted from fright! What a coward he is. I wanted to make sure that whichever he picked, they’d both taste salty, so I put sodium chloride in both.”
Finally Lockhart got some control of himself and continued his monologue: “Yes, I just wanted to see him suffer the agonies of approaching death. I could no more have killed him in cold blood than the man in the moon, for all of his attempt at my life. Well, I’m safe from him now forever and a day. This confession in my pocket will keep him away. If I’m ever found dead under unnatural circumstances, the finger of guilt will point right to him. That’s all I wanted! And I told him I’d kill him! Why if he had refused to drink, I wouldn’t have known what to do next to save my face!”
“I think what I’ll do now is pick up my notebook, write a short note explaining why he isn’t dead when he reads it, and leave while I’ve got the chance. This affair is getting on my nerves. The sooner I get away from here the better.”
Lockhart snapped on the lights. He found his precious notebook and pocketed it. As he passed Wickersham something in his appearance made him pause.
A flurry of fear gripped his heart. Calling himself a fool for doing it, Lockhart felt for his pulse. He dropped the limp wrist and with a wildly beating heart, picked up a mirror on the table and carefully held it under Wickersham’s nose.
The mirror clattered to the floor as it dropped out of Lockhart’s nerveless fingers. He backed away from the body slowly.
“My God!” he said softly, “He IS dead!”
THE END
THE JUDGMENT SUN
Earth Faces Destruction—and Only One Man Dares to Match Wits with the Cosmos!
CHAPTER I
World’s End
THE earth was falling into the sun!
There was no doubt about it. It was to be seen with one’s own eyes! In the Western Hemisphere, the people on the Atlantic coast saw a swollen sun arise from the sea. Blood-red and distorted by uneven refraction, it reared above the horizon like a giant eye of doom.
It seemed, to fishermen staring awestruck over the waters, that this incredible sun that was four times larger than usual, hung for a moment as though too heavy to rise. Or as though it were gathering strength for a titanic effort to pursue its ageless course despite increased mass.
There it hung for an instant. Then, like a cosmic, bloated leech, swelled by some nameless feast of celestial vampirism, it shoved its ponderous, unbelievable bulk above sea level. Blood-hued, puffed like a strained balloon, insanely overgrown like a malignant toadstool, this monster sun loomed into the sky, defiling its pure, dainty blue.
The fishermen had seen many and many a sun swollen by refraction during the dawn, but never had they seen such a huge orb spew from the eastern waves. And when the passage of an hour failed to reduce this awful phenomenon, and made it certain that it was to remain, the fishermen frantically hoisted sail. Their only thought was to flee from this ominous thing.
Faces white beneath the salt-spray tan, they turned away and refused to look again at the hideous, enlarged globe of
fire.
The leviathan sun flamed its way up into the heavens. It seemed to fuse the sky together, so that it ran molten in streaks of ultramarine and glowing yellow, Beneath it, the ocean seemed to lose its deep blue-green and become crystal clear because of the piercing flood of rays from above.
Then this stupendous sun, as though Phaeton-driven, lifted itself ponderously, for all the people of that part of the world to see, and a rising volume of fearful, gasping cries seemed to swell upward from millions of throats. The sun! The sun was twice as wide as it should be! Its face was four times larger than normal! What in the name of all the gods was happening?
The answer came to all, to some insidiously, to others hammeringly, to yet others explosively—the sun is falling down on Earth! Or to the more scientific-minded who were correct in little details—Earth is falling into the sun!
Einstein might have thought for an instant—if any man could be so detached in nature—ah! a chance to demonstrate the basic principle of relativity at one stroke to all the world. For, whichever way you put it, sun onto Earth, or Earth into sun, the end result was the same!
Great catastrophes and holocausts of the past paled into utter insignificance beside this one. The great Chicago fire, the four-year carnage of the World War, even the legendary sinking of Atlantis—what were they compared to this world doom? Staggering millions had been wiped out by the Black Plague of medieval times, perhaps one-third of the existing population, but here all—all must die! There would be no younger generation to clean up and begin anew.
This was that inconceivable thing—death for all. The human mind, no more than it can think upon its own personal death without an alarming unrest, could not really grasp the thought of universal doom without going blank. Minds that did fully absorb the horrific thought, those minds went mad. But in the majority of people, a temporary barrier of delusionary amnesia kept them from realizing what it meant when their cracked lips spoke out the doom. One can imagine people walking around like shell-shock victims, muttering: “Everyone is going to die—everyone on Earth!” and then grinning foolishly at the absurdity.
Yet in the back of his mind each person knew, knew in such a horribly positive way, that all were going to die, the whole world at once and as one. It ran like a moan through the seared atmosphere—“Everyone is going to die!”
Everyone is going to die! Everyon—is—going—to—die! EVERYONE!
AT Williams Bay, Wisconsin, a group of scientists, both professional and academic, got together at eight o’clock in the morning of that day of doom. Some had driven up from Chicago, others had come by train and bus, one had even flown up there to Yerkes Observatory, instinctively seeking out astronomical authority. The answer must be here.
Yet for all their hopes, these men could not fail to notice that the air was tropically warm and the humidity almost insufferable. Even if Earth did stop its mad plunge sunward, the increased temperature would drive civilization toward the poles.
At last a murmur rose from the troubled crowd gathered at the town’s small central park. A huge car rolled up and several figures stepped out almost before it had come to a stop. A group of four made its way to the rostrum where on summer evenings the municipal band gave its concerts.
The crowd quieted down as whitehaired, portly Professor Hargreave, second official of the Yerkes Observatory, nervously wiped his sweated face and confronted them.
“Gentlemen, I—this is an honor—” Ridiculous words, yet the crowd did not laugh or smile politely to itself. Momus himself, god of laughter and merriment, would have been powerless to wring a single chuckle from this grim, dazed crowd. Professor Hargreave drew a long breath and continued:
“Well, you all want to know what the official report on this—this phenomenon is.” A murmur of anxious assent came from the audience. “Well, it seems—that is—dammit all, gentlemen, we have no report! And I don’t know what you got me down here for in the first place. Did you expect that if we said the earth was not falling into the sun, that the thing would promptly change back to normal? What do your own eyes tell you?”
The crowd gasped and seemed to huddle together.
“About the only report I could give you is something you all know anyway. That the sun’s apparent diameter is almost twice normal, which means that it has approached within fifty million miles. It is too early yet to figure the rate at which Earth is moving—he drew out the next word with an effort—“sunward, but it must be at least at a speed of one thousand miles per second.
“Unbelievable as it seems, our planet is already as close to the sun as Mercury at its furthest aphelion! The lag in rising temperature, which should result, can be explained by our dense atmosphere, which is acting as a protective blanket. But when the atmosphere becomes saturated with heat—”
He broke off, as though the rest were too horrible, and finished lamely, “Well, that’s all I can say—”
He turned away with a gesture of dismissal. The crowd stirred but did not break up. It seemed reluctant to go away without some word of hope. But what word of hope could there be?
HARGREAVE was about to step off the platform, half angry at having been cajoled here to tell them that two plus two was four. Hardly anyone noticed the calm-faced, tall young man who threaded his way toward the rostrum and finally stepped on it.
“just a minute!”
A hundred pairs of eyes swung about in surprise, stared at him curiously. The young man raised his voice as he went on:
“Professor Hargreave and gentlemen, I can tell you something about this phenomenon. I can tell you, for instance, why Earth is falling into the sun!”
“You can tell us why?” Hargreave echoed, and all the crowd echoed his words mentally.
“Yes.” The young man looked at them blandly. He seemed perfectly at ease. He paled a little, though, as he sensed a sudden murderous mood arising in the group. How did he dare to stand there, calm and unafraid, at a time like this?
His face became serious suddenly. “I can give you a reason for this event,” he said earnestly.
CHAPTER II
Man’s Fate
SIMULTANEQUSLY, thousands of miles away, a drama concerning, not millions of men, but only two, was being played in lonely isolation.
The steaming furnace of the jungle had been around them for three days—three sleepless, grueling days. At last Cabel turned like an infuriated animal. His gross, bearded face, sweaty and haggardly lined, worked savagely.
“Damn you, Robinson, you’re killing me!” he panted, sucking in the hot, miasmal air with straining lungs. “No sleep for two nights, just march, march, march! I’m carrying both our packs, and when I want water, you torture me with a few drops. And these two bags of dust weigh a ton? I tell you I can’t—I won’t go on!”
The grin that came to young Burt Robinson’s face was diabolic.
“I tell you you’re killing me!” screamed Cabel, making a desperate lunge. Burt side-stepped with a short, harsh laugh, and pulled out a pistol. It was Cabel’s own gun. Cabel, growling, slid to one knee. He made a futile attempt to hunch the double pack off his aching, tormented shoulders, but Burt’s knots held, as they had for three days.
The younger man wiped his sweaty hands on his shirt, then took from his pocket a folded piece of paper, opened it up. In his clear script were the words:
I confess to the murder of William Johnson, with a knife owned by Mayla, our native guide and porter, whom I also murdered.
Signed
“Ready to oblige?” rasped Burt, waving the paper.
Cabel looked up, eyes like fevered coals between the matted hair hanging down over his forehead.
“Never, damn you! I’m going to last this out, Robinson, see if I don’t. I’ve had twenty years of jungle, and it’s never beaten me yet. They don’t come any tougher than me. Come on!”
Cabel forced himself to rocking legs and staggered along the fern-clogged trail. Burt put away the paper and followed. Immediately, with th
eir exertion, the frightful heat clothed them in almost unendurable suffocation.
Stabbing rays of the sun, like molten bars of steel, played a constant tattoo on their clothing, which already seemed on fire. Burt could not guess the temperature, but he swore to himself it was the hottest day in history.
But this torture of heat did not bother him as much as the fact that Cabel was bearing up miraculously, load, short water rations, and all. Burt frowned. Before nightfall they would reach the river. If Cabel did not crack before then, he might very well last it out. The row up the river would not be as much of a grind as this jungle trek. Was Cabel to win out in this grim game?
At camp three days before, while Burt had been out hauling water from the spring, Cabel had knifed Bill Johnson in the back, and then had shot Mayla, the Indian porter, whose knife he had used. Burt Robinson had been saved by returning unexpectedly by way of the rock path, surprising Cabel, and getting the drop on him.
Burt had almost killed Cabel in rage, seeing Johnson’s agonized face, but he could not kill a man, even one like Cabel, in cold blood. Thereupon, he had decided to wring from him a confession to insure his punishment by law up at Koniko. Cabel had sneered confidently. Then they had started on this journey into Inferno, with Burt carrying the two guns and promising Cabel the worst five-day hell he had ever imagined.
Burt had no pity for the stumbling, moaning man ahead of him. Pity for him? For three years he, Cabel and Bill Johnson, and faithful Mayla had worked their bonanza. Had sweated, toiled, laughed side by side. They had panned their dried, well hidden creek bed for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in dust and small nuggets. Enough for all. Plenty!