by Earl
“How did you happen to get into the, court trial?” asked Danny Hogan, mentally filling in his newspaper story.
“Just as a sort of field test for it—to see if it would work outside the laboratory. It was again Miss Cole’s suggestion. She has, I would say, a sense of the dramatic.”
The young scientist glanced at his assistant half amusedly, as though above such things himself. “The prosecutor was desperate enough to try it—and of course it worked.”
“AND how it worked!” Danny Hogan’s thoughts erupted. “You take it mighty calm, Dr. Randall. Lord, do you realize what it means? That machine can cut crime to a minimum. It’ll ring out confessions like a cash register. I’ve sat at dozens of trials and ground my teeth down to the nerves, seeing the guilty go free. And simply because there was no way of making them tell the truth. But with this apparatus legalized to make witnesses tell the whole truth and no fooling, why it’s a stupendous thing, a—a—colossal thing—”
The young biochemist interrupted.
“Yes, I suppose so. Prosecutor Haines said about the same thing. He is taking care of that end of it.” He swept an arm around to his other apparatus. “But I am going ahead with my work. There are a dozen things to find out, scientifically important. The wavelength of thought, the exact mechanism of ionization—it’s a new field of science, wide open, unexplored—”
That look again. But Danny Hogan couldn’t see any further. Dale Randall broke off apologetically. “But you’re only interested in the crime application, Mr. Hogan. Would you like to try the process yourself, so you can report to Dr. Rohr just how it works?”
“Dr. Rohr? Oh, yes, yes—” Danny Hogan unthinkingly allowed the scientist to slip the headband over his temples and saw him snap the switch of his audio-circuit. The scratching sounded out, drowned an instant later by a microphonic voice that had no inflections and ran in a hurried, uninterrupted flow—
“—man oh man what a story this is going to make for the Star a super scoop I’ll get a raise out of it—”
Danny Hogan sat there frozen, suddenly aware of the trap he had fallen into, while the startled eyes of Dale Randall glared at him frostily.
“—wow am I in hot water now damn this thing anyhow it’s too weird to believe how can I stop it oh Lord—”
It occurred to Danny Hogan to jerk off the headband at about the same time Dale Randall snapped his switch.
“Get out!” hissed the young scientist in cold anger. “A reporter! I suppose you’ll have all this in your garbled newspaper jargon by tonight. And I’ll get a lot of cheap notoriety out of it. My colleagues of science will sneer, thinking I wanted it.” He groaned. “Get out, you damned sneak—”
IF Danny Hogan hadn’t been so completely unnerved by the betrayal of his thoughts, he would have resented the epithet and given Dale Randall a sock on the jaw, scientist or no scientist. But still red-faced, he slunk out like a culprit. He knew exactly how Blacky Doone had felt, and why he had broken down after hearing his most intimate, secret thought-processes blared out by a pitiless machine. You felt utterly naked, with a thousand searchlights lighting you up—
Plagued by these sensations, Danny Hogan scurried for a quick exit, too disorganized mentally to say a further word. The girl Leah Cole held the door open for him, as frosty faced as her companion. Somehow, that made him feel still lower.
Funny people, these scientists, Danny Hogan reflected outside, drawing in deep breaths and raking together his shattered composure. A lot of pride in their work. He shrugged as he drove away. Anyway, he had a scoop and what a scoop!
But all the while that he was writing it up, back at the office, he kept thinking of the cheap deception he had practiced to get it. And that scornful look in Leah Cole’s eyes. When he finished the account at six o’clock, he suddenly stuffed it into his desk, missing his last chance to make the evening edition.
He grinned whimsically as he drove back to the university. First time his conscience—ye gods, he actually had one!—had played him this trick. He waited outside the biology building. As he had hoped, they were working late. He could see the lights in their corner laboratory. Almost an hour later, they emerged. They separated at the end of the walk. Drawing a breath, Danny Hogan stepped from behind a tree and approached the girl.
“Oh!” she gasped, then kept on walking.
Hogan fell in step. “Miss Cole, please listen,” he began. “You won’t see any story of mine in the papers. I held it. I’ll tear it up if you and Randall say the word!”
The girl stopped. “Do you mean that?” she cried, some of the contempt going out of her face. “It would mean so much to Dr. Randall! You see, he hasn’t announced his results yet to the Biochemical Journal. Scientists that play themselves up in the newspapers before official announcement aren’t thought much of. It’s a matter of ethics.”
“I get it,” nodded Hogan. “I’ll wait. Now I want you to square it up with Randall for me. I like the guy, somehow. Can you?”
“I’ll try—though he raved against you all afternoon.” The girl smiled. “I don’t think you’re all the mean things he called you, after all!”
Hogan winced, having a faint idea. “Let’s have dinner together!” he suggested, as though on the spur of the moment. “We can talk it all over.”
“Well—okay!” laughed the girl. “But I have to be back at the lab by eight. We work nights, there’s so much to do.”
In one thing, Danny Hogan found himself right. Leah Cole was a remarkably lovely girl without the hornrimmed goggles. And she seemed to display a genuine interest in his calling, which he somehow got around to telling about. She was human, he told himself, Fellowship scholar or not. He had found that out about her, which meant she was brainier than any other three girls. But she was feminine, too, and friendly and alluring—
They separated before the laboratory building, the girl promising to try smoothing away the misunderstanding between Randall and himself, for an early meeting. Hogan felt pleased with himself. But he didn’t know whether it was more over saving a man’s pride, or gaining the friendship of a fascinating girl—
CHAPTER III
Gangland Takes Revenge
HOGAN met Leah Cole the next evening at six o’clock, outside the laboratory. “Well,” he said, “would Randall still shoot me on sight?”
The girl shook her blonde curls, laughing. “No, he’s forgiven you in view of the fact that you withheld your story. You can see him tonight.”
“You wouldn’t be hungry by any chance?” Hogan asked.
“Ravenously!” she agreed.
It was dark outside when they entered the laboratory an hour later. Dale Randall was bent over his worktable, examining some bits of crystal with a magnifying lens.
“Sorry about the other day, Randall,” began Danny Hogan. “I didn’t understand—”
“Look!” interposed the young scientist, as though he hadn’t heard. “Diamonds!”
“Diamonds!” blurted Hogan in astonishment. He leaned over. Though they were small, there were many of them, drying on a pad of blotter paper. Several hundred dollars worth, perhaps.
“I made them!” Dale Randall said next.
“You made them!” echoed Hogan blankly. “You don’t mean that you—”
“Made them, yes,” repeated Randall. “I dissolved carbon in my new solution and crystallized it out in this isomeric form, known in commerce as diamonds.” He straightened up. “My new solution is more amazing than I thought. By accident, I used a carbon electrode in an experiment. Trying to measure the inductive strength of my brain-field, I had the quite irrelevant thought that it would be strange to see the carbon dissolve. So it dissolved!”
“You mean your thought—”
Randall nodded. “Those ions are extremely sensitive to thought. My mere thought that the carbon might dissolve started that process! Apparently those ions, charged with that thought-impulse, carried it out as a sort of command!”
He waved a hand.
“But it’s not too startling. The chemistry of carbon is strange. And the biochemistry of carbon is almost fantastic. We have some forty elements dissolved in our bodies, including metals like copper and manganese. It’s an electrochemical set-up, involving neural as well as physical processes. My pure solution of ions responding to neuro-mental impulses could be likened to what has been popularly called the ‘universal solvent’. I’ve already tried platinum, to see it dissolve like a strip of magnesium in acid, when I mentally suggested that the metal dissolve!”
DANNY HOGAN’S head was swimming. Artificial diamonds! Universal solvent! It sounded like never-never stuff, the kind the Sunday supplement writers drooled over. This young genius was making it come true, like waving a wand.
“There’s so much to find out, in the science of life!” Dale Randall was saying. “Biology is like a deep, deep pool. The lower you dip, the more remote the bottom is. I’ve got a start on something new. I hope to find out something of the mechanism of our mental apparatus—in the next ten or twenty years. As far as these diamonds go”—he shoved them aside—“it was just a pretty experiment. They could be made large and more perfect than the natural ones, and much more cheaply, if one were interested.”
“One of these days,” predicted Danny Hogan, “the diamond market is going to fall flatter than a pancake, when that solution gets around.” He made a mental note to sell his diamond cuff-links at the first opportunity.
“My next step,” continued Randall, “will be applying this solution to telepathic communication.”
“Telepathy?” asked Hogan calmly. He was almost shock-proof to further astonishment.
“My guinea-pigs”—Randall indicated them, squealing in a cage—“show signs of it. The solution is toxic in concentrated form, like acid. But it can be given in small, dilute doses. The aftereffect is merely a temporary fever. But for an hour, before the dose wears out, the inoculated animal will sit and sniff and act as though it were listening to something. I suspect that the ion-solution in its veins picks up mental vibrations and transmits them to its brain. I haven’t tried the experiment on myself yet, mostly because”—he smiled at his assistant—“Miss Cole suggests caution. We will have to determine its exact toxicity first.”
“Telepathy, on top of all the rest!” murmured Danny Hogan. “Boy, what a story—” He broke off, flushing. “Don’t worry, Randall,” he added hastily, “I won’t give it out till you say so.”
Dale Randall suddenly extended his hand. “I like you, Hogan,” he said. “I’m sending my report in at the end of the week. After that, you can print your story. I promise you that no other reporter will have it.”
“Fair enough,” grinned Hogan. He was grinning still more when he left. Leah Cole had promised to have dinner with him the next evening again. And Danny Hogan had never before asked a girl to dinner three times in a row.
WHEN they were returning to the laboratory that next evening, after an enjoyable dinner together, it was quite dark. Driving down the winding university’s lane, Danny Hogan suddenly wrenched at the wheel. His car spun to the side just in time to avoid being struck by another car that had loomed up almost silently from the other direction. It had no lights. It careened by at a reckless rate.
Cursing under his breath, Hogan straightened out his course. “You’d think these college punks would have enough sense to go slow without lights,” he grumbled.
“They weren’t college boys,” said Leah Cole, puzzled. “I had a brief glimpse of them and they were rather hard-looking, older men.” She laughed a little shakily. “For a moment, in the excitement, I actually imagined that in the back seat they had a man bound and gagged!”
“You’ve been seeing too many gangster movies,” bantered Hogan.
“I guess so,” confessed the girl. “Because yesterday I was almost convinced there was a man lurking outside the laboratory, keeping an eye on us—oh, it’s so silly! I’m ashamed of myself.”
Hogan looked at her queerly. “Yeah, it’s silly,” he said. “Only I wish you’d told me—”
They entered the laboratory a few minutes later, expecting to find the young scientist hard at work, since the lights were on. But he wasn’t there. The girl gasped as she looked around. A chair had been overturned, several flasks lay on the floor shattered, and a row of books on Randall’s desk had been knocked over.
“He’s gone!” whispered Leah Cole. “And there’s been a struggle here—” Her eyes became horror-stricken. “That car—those men, Danny!” she almost shrieked. “They came and took him away, bound and gagged! Why should they do that,—what does it mean?”
Danny Hogan’s eyes went hard. They’re taking him for—a ride!”
“But who would do that, and why?” wailed the girl half hysterically.
“The avengers of Blacky Doone!” snapped the reporter. “Oh, I could kick myself for not foreseeing this might happen! Doone was part of a powerful underworld ring. Naturally, when they read about it, they wanted to get the man whose gadget forced out Doone’s confession. They had a lookout planted—the man you saw lurking—to see when they could get Randall. Now they’ll take him out to some lonely spot and—”
HE stopped. Leah Cole seemed about to faint. But instead she suddenly drew herself up. We’ve got to do something to save him!” she cried nervously.
“Wish we could!” groaned Hogan. “About all we can do is notify the police—” He dived for the phone and dialed rapidly.
“Hello? . . . Sergeant Murphy! . . . Danny Hogan calling. . . . Never mind how I’ve been—there’s been a kidnaping! . . . Dr. Dale Randall of the University, abducted by Blacky Doone’s gang. Send out all your squad cars, on every highway leading out of the city!
“. . . Get going—”
Hogan slammed the phone in its cradle and turned back to the girl. “There! That’ll stir ’em up. They’re sending a squad car here, and all the rest out on the road.”
Suddenly his face fell. “But I’m afraid it’s too late!” he muttered despondently. “No one knows just where they’ll go and it’ll be all over soon. They work fast. Take it easy, Leah. We can’t—”
“Look!” broke in the girl. She pointed to a small flask on Randall’s desk, half filled with greenish fluid. “It was full when I left. He drank some of that. It’s our new solution!”
“What—poisoned himself, knowing what was coming?” gasped Hogan in dismay. “I didn’t think he was that type.”
The girl, without answering, suddenly grabbed up the flask and raised it to her lips. Hogan clutched her wrist.
“I can’t let you do that, Leah,” Hogan panted. “Do you know why?—because I care for you! Because I—
I—”
“You fool!” cried the girl. “I love Dale Randall!”
SHE wrenched loose from his suddenly limp hand and gulped down the liquid. She gasped and choked after it was down, but recovered.
Danny Hogan had stood like a wooden Indian, a stunned look in his eyes. He came out of it now.
“But why did he take the stuff?” he asked bewilderedly.
“Telepathy!” snapped Leah Cole. “We believe it means that. We were going to try it soon. Dale must have thought of that at the last second, and drank half the solution before they could drag him away. He knew I’d notice it was half gone. Now be quiet while I concentrate!”
The girl’s face became deeply reflective in the next minute. The pupils of her eyes contracted. Hypnotic concentration forced her forehead into deep wrinkles. Hogan, watching dazedly, saw her face light up suddenly.
“I hear him!” she whispered tensely. “His voice—by telepathy!” She seemed to listen for a moment. Then she whirled toward the reporter. “Highway 67, Danny, is where they’re driving now, going through Oak Park, heading for the country—”
No more than a minute later, followed by the squad car that had just arrived, Danny Hogan’s little car rattled wide open down the nearest boulevard. It spun around a corner a mile down wi
th screaming tires, onto Highway 67.
Danny Hogan sat with a tight grip on his wheel, driving as he had never driven before. Leah Cole sat huddled in the corner.
“Oh, Danny, pray that we get there in time!” she half sobbed. “I wouldn’t want to live if he were gone. I’ve loved him ever since I first met him, though he’s never noticed me—that way.”
Hogan took an instant to glance at her, sympathetically. “I know how you feel, kid—I’m praying with you.” His lips tightened a little.
Her hand touched his arm. “Thanks, Danny. That’s about the sweetest thing you could say, since—”
She stiffened suddenly, again going into a semi-trance. A little later she clutched his arm. “Wait—slow down! They turned off here somewhere. Dale is telling me that. Into the woods. There!—right there, where that dirt road turns off—”
THE gun-battle was short and sweet.
Two of the culprits were shot. The two remaining surrendered. Hogan and Leah, watching from the sidelines, ran up to the kidnap car, when the battle was over.
“Dale, are you all right?” gasped Leah.
But it wasn’t till Hogan had loosened his gag that Dale Randall was able to say, with a grin, “Say, that telepathy worked fine, didn’t it, Miss Cole?”
“Yes, it did, Da—Dr. Randall,” agreed the girl. Hogan saw a shining light in her eyes dim and fade.
“There’s another story for you, Hogan,” continued the scientist, as though nothing untoward had happened. “Trapped by telepathy, or something like that.”
When they were all squeezed into Hogan’s car, the reporter asked, “Hospital or home?”
“The laboratory!” responded Randall, in surprise. “I want to make notes of the telepathic rapport Miss Cole and I had, though its effects are worn off now. As for this slight fever we have, it’ll go away. I won’t keep you long at the laboratory, Miss Cole.”