The Collected Stories

by Earl

  He drew the needle out carefully. Only one drop of blood resulted, and that he wiped away. Nothing showed. He did the same to the middle finger of the other hand. The limp figure made no sign of feeling what ordinarily would have been sharp pain for a moment. The anesthetic ray induced perfect lack of feeling in the human body.

  Hale put away the needle, looked down at the hands, and nodded in satisfaction. He folded them in Paxton’s lap, wheeled the taboret away, and snapped off the anesthetic ray switch.

  Paxton sat up, blinking, instantly awake.

  “Eh? What were you saying?”

  He had the embarrassed air of a man who had just caught himself at the point of going to sleep before company.

  “It’s just a little laboratory experiment,” Hale said. “Pointless, as you say. I make gold—in my own way. You will arrange about the fare, then?

  I will come to pay you when you are ready.”

  While talking, casually, Hale conducted his money-mad visitor to the door.

  CHAPTER XII

  Midas Touch

  RIDING away in his limousine, Paxton reflected that Dr. Strato was a man of eccentric whims. Naturally he didn’t make gold. He had a rich mine somewhere. That gave him the Midas Touch in effect. . . .

  The Midas Touch! How wonderful it must be just to stretch out your hand, touch something, and see it turn to beautiful, shining gold! Just put out your hand, like this. . . .

  Paxton started.

  He had touched the cushion at his side, and it had turned a rich, golden yellow in an area a foot across. His hand itself, to the wrist, was of the same tawny tint. Experimentally he touched the window ledge, the glass, his suit. All seemed to take on that exciting hue. His left hand seemed equally capable.

  Imagination, of course. His left hand seemed equally capable.

  Imagination, of course, he told himself scornfully. He had become excited by all that talk about gold. He put his hands in his pockets resolutely, before his driver would notice his queer actions.

  Midas Touch, indeed! This was the 21st century, free from fairy-tale superstitions. Yet it was a queer trick his eyes had played on him a moment before. Now it disturbed him to look down at his pockets and see the bulges around his hands gleaming apparently with a shimmering golden color. Imagination, of course.

  Arriving at his sumptuous bachelor apartment, Paxton dismissed his chauffeur. At the door he reached to turn the door handle. He paused with his hand six inches from the ivory door knob. No longer a creamy white in color, it gleamed deep yellow. Golden!

  Paxton went in, shaking his head. Imagination. . . .

  His apartment was flashily decorated in a golden motif. Gold-plated statuettes and lamps occupied the corners. Paxton kept no servants. They might yield to temptation, and were an unnecessary item on a miserly budget.

  He hung up his wraps and sank into a tawny leather easy chair, thinking over the queer Dr. Strato and his strange offer. Idly he picked a cigaret from a gold-inlaid case. As he brought it close to his lips, he started. The white cylinder had changed to a golden one!

  Was it just the reflection of the golden tints all around him? It must be.

  PAXTON lit a match, was suddenly holding a sliver of gold. The flame was yellower than it should be. With a smothered curse, he flung the cigaret and match away. They lay on the thick rug designed with golden dragons. The cigaret was mockingly white again, the match wooden.

  A fine dew of sweat beaded Paxton’s forehead. He drew several coins from his pockets, held them in his hand. Nickel, silver and copper coins, yet all shone brightly like burnished gold! What madness was this?

  He drew a shaky breath. “Imagination, damn it!” he cried aloud.

  He glanced at the wall clock. Its case and dial gleamed yellow. He started. Then he remembered that the clock had always been that color. When he read the time, he arose to press the dumbwaiter buzzer for his nightly milk and cold sandwich, from the building’s kitchen below.

  The smoothly silent dumbwaiter deposited the usual fare. Paxton stretched his hand slowly for the sandwich of white bread and thin sausage. Beside it stood a glass of white milk.

  “Turn to gold!” he muttered in mockery of himself. “Turn to gold, I say. I’ve got the Midas Touch!”

  In mockery of his mockery, the white bread turned to yellow corn-bread. The milk took on the hue of butter. Paxton’s eyes riveted on them. Then, savagely, he bit into the sandwich, closing his eyes. He had the vivid sensation of crunching flaky gold between his teeth. The strip of sausage was a golden disk that would break his jaw. And when he took a hasty gulp of milk, he gagged at the thought of its being molten gold!

  The Golden Touch? The Midas Curse!

  He flung the sandwich and milk away, stumbled toward his bedroom. He ignored the golden flashes that beat against his eyes whenever his hands touched something. In bed, in the dark, he calmed his trembling nerves. After an hour he convinced himself it was sheer hallucination. He had been working hard lately. His nervous system was upset.

  He switched on the bed lamp at that point, reached for a book. Reading would bring sleep. But the pages were blank, blinding sheets of gold.

  Shuddering, Sir Charles Paxton consigned himself to the mercy of darkness. He knew now how King Midas must have felt had there been such an accursed creature.

  * * * * *

  AND vicariously Richard Hale knew too how he had felt.

  By means of a spy ray, he had seen Paxton in his limousine and watched his first consternation. In succession, Hale had observed the tormented man test the curse that rested in his hands. The act of flinging away the sandwich and milk had made Hale chuckle mirthlessly. It had followed almost to the letter the legend of Midas. The final scene of a miserable man crawling into a sleepless bed had been a fitting climax.

  “Step One!” Hale gloated as darkness cut off the scenes. “The punishment fits the person perfectly in the case of Paxton.” His lips twisted bitterly. “Yet he has only had a few hours of it. I had three long years of suffering in Strato-prison.”

  Turning to switch off the generator of the spy ray, he stared at the instrument for a moment. It was still a wonder to him, though he had completed and used it a month before. It was perhaps the greatest of Dr. Allison’s mental inventions—except for one other. And the latter he might never attempt to use at all, at any time.

  Even the spy ray, at first, had seemed a dread sort of thing to make and use. Its invisible, undetectable beam penetrated anywhere, through all matter. A tiny diamond crystal set in vibration by AP-energy projected the beam as a subatomic radiation that was more penetrating than cosmic rays. And it could be focused clearly at any earthly distance or dimension.

  It was, in brief, super-television. At the controlled focal point, sight and sound were absorbed. The usual television principles were then applicable, to reproduce on Hale’s screen what the modulated spy beam saw and heard. Someday it would simplify television enormously, when a suitable insulating material could be developed for privacy’s sake.

  But to Hale the spy ray now, represented more than just a way to enjoy the bruits of subtle revenge. It enabled him to follow every plan, every secret of the Five in their program toward world domination. . . .

  DR. EMANUEL GORDY looked around at his four confreres in their sound-proof secret room in the heart of New Washington. His eyes gleamed with the fires of a megalomaniac who visioned world dictatorship. He spoke in sonorous tones filled with self-importance.

  “We will now have the reports. Mausser.”

  Jonathan Mausser licked his fat lips, as though in relish of a recent meal. His little black eyes peered triumphantly from the white fat folds of his face. In five years he had risen to the post of Secretary of Law for the World Government.

  “Airlines Company has just gone bankrupt,” he stated. “Our suit against them was successful. They were very heavily fined for crossing one of our air lanes. Transport Corporation now hold the complete world-wide monopoly on all air
routes. No plane leaves the ground unless Transport—in plain words, we sanction it!”

  “Good,” commanded Gordy, “Control of the skies in this era is control of the world. Asquith?”

  Peter Asquith looked the part of an honest, upright citizen, for he carried an air of bland integrity. He was now Minister of Public Enlightenment for the World Government.

  “Our agents are everywhere ready at a moment’s notice to lay down a barrage of propaganda against the Government. Almost overnight we can label the present regime a slipshod failure, ready to be supplanted by our more vigorous one.”

  Gordy nodded. “Government must always be vigorous, even to the point of ruthlessness. The human race must be lifted from slothfulness. Von Grenfeld?”

  Ivan von Grenfeld sat stiffly, his broad shoulders filling his blue-and-crimson uniform of the World League Police, whose High Commander he now was. He held his ruggedly handsome head high. One of his clenched fists lay on the conference table, the other rested on a sword hilt at his side.

  “A million trained troopers of the Dictator Syndicate in Europe are now available, secretly trained for action. It is a far larger fighting force than any other in existence today, since the Disarmament Decree of 1985. The World League standing army numbers only a hundred thousand. We have the balance of military power.”

  Gordy’s thin lips expressed satisfaction.

  “When the Subatlantic Tube is officially opened soon, those Syndicate troopers can strike at Washington within ten hours. Perfect! Paxton?”

  Sir Charles Paxton was nervously fidgeting in his chair. His hands, in his lap, were fitted with yellow kid gloves that he wore despite summer warmth. The muscles of his thin cheeks twitched.

  “The money reserves of the world are now definitely in our hands. As Secretary of Finance, I control the stock exchange. Buried at Fort Knox, available to no one but us, are ten billion dollars, the world’s total supply, in—” he hesitated, unwilling to finish the sentence—“in gold reserves.”

  The other four were staring at him now.

  “You sound nervous, Paxton,” remarked Gordy. “But about this gold reserve—”

  “Gold!” It was almost a shriek from Paxton. “Don’t say that word! It’s driving me mad!”

  “Paxton, what—”

  PAXTON had arisen, eyes wild.

  He held up his hands. The yellow kid gloves were of a peculiar shade, like gold. He ripped them off. Then slowly, like a man in a nightmare, he brought, his right hand close to an ashtray on the table. The bright chromium dimmed and became a magnificent golden color.

  “Do you see?” cried Paxton hoarsely. “I’ve got the Golden Touch, the Midas Curse! It’s driving me mad. Everything I reach my hands for turns to gold. Clothes, paper, pipe, silver coins, even dirt—everything. Even the food I eat mocks me with the luster of gold. I thought it was hallucination at first. Now I know I’m cursed. It isn’t real gold, of course. It’s a false shine. False, mocking, maddening—”

  The words had come out in a rush, though they represented twenty-four miserably slow hours of increasing torture. To Paxton’s mercenary soul, it was subtle mental agony that the shine was false. For everything before him to assume temporarily a golden color which he loved, and which always faded, was irony beyond his appreciation.

  “I can’t stand it!” he shrieked. He was at the breaking point.

  Gordy ran over and began shaking him.

  “Control yourself!” he barked. “How did this happen?”

  Paxton went on in a calmer voice, telling of his visit to Dr. Strato, and the subsequent miracle of the Golden Touch.

  “Simple enough,” snorted Dr. Gordy. “You probably touched some radioactive solution in Dr. Strato’s laboratory. Did you go back to find out?”

  Paxton shook his head, “No. I was hoping it would go away.”

  Gordy stared at him narrowly. “You’re going to pieces. With our plans coming to a climax, we need you in better shape. Call up this Dr. Strato right now and find out what can be done.” He motioned the rest of the men aside. “We must not be seen together.”

  Paxton went to the corner and sat before the visi-phone set. In several seconds he had been connected, through central exchange, with Dr. Strato’s home. The mysterious scientist’s face looked inquiringly into his. Paxton told of the phenomenon.

  “How unfortunate!” Dr. Strato exclaimed. “Yes, you must have touched one of my solutions. But the deposit is only on your skin. It will wear away.” The lips drew up in a saturnine smile. “You recall I said the Golden Touch would be a curse? I think you will agree with me now.” Paxton shut off the machine and turned away with some relief in his face. They all resumed their places. But the interruption had disturbed the atmosphere.

  “That is rather an amazing radioactive substance,” Dr. Gordy mused. “New to science.”

  “What I would like to know, Paxton,” asked Jonathan Mausser suspiciously, “is why you didn’t inform us immediately of the million-dollar offer that man made? It isn’t the money, but the principle of the thing.”

  “Were you thinking,” chimed in von Grenfeld gruffly, “of not telling us at all?”

  “And with ten billion dollars in your control at Fort Knox,” Peter Asquith said quickly.

  Paxton glared at the accusations.

  IMPLICATIONS hung heavily in the air. Five men who plotted unlimited world power could not help but suspect counterplot, even among themselves.

  “Gentlemen!” Gordy’s voice crackled authoritatively. “Let’s not quarrel among ourselves on the eve of our great venture. I dismiss the matter of this Dr. Strato from the discussion. We must bend our every thought and faculty to the coming events.”

  All nodded, but the cloud of suspicion had not entirely dissipated. They continued to shoot guarded glances at one another.

  “About the gold,” continued Gordy. “With most of it buried at Fort Knox, under our control, our transportation monopoly can’t be broken. We control all transportation. Our first step will be to rapidly paralyze industry by holding up shipments of all kinds.

  “Asquith’s propaganda service will then blame the Government. Mausser’s official statements will admit the Government’s lack of a law to break the monopoly. Von Grenfeld’s police will quell riots ruthlessly, again giving the Government a black eye. Then our Syndicate troopers will move swiftly under the Atlantic and capture New Washington. Five steps and the rule of Earth will be in our hands!”

  The Five looked at one another eagerly, suspicions fading. Even Paxton’s nervousness eased at the approach of the great moment they had planned for ten years.

  Gordy was about to resume when the visi-phone buzzer sounded.

  They started. Only their most trusted agents knew the call-number for this set, and they had definite instructions to call only for something vitally important.

  “It’s probably for me,” said Paxton, his nervousness returning. “The stock exchange was acting a little today.”

  He took the call, when the others had moved out of range. A wild-eyed man stared out of the visiscreen.

  “Number twenty-one-B,” snapped Paxton. “What is it?”

  “The stock exchange, sir!” gasped the man. “Something has happened. Heavy trading and buying went on before closing, We just finished totaling and found that twenty-five percent of Transport’s stocks went into new hands!”

  “Impossible!” shouted Paxton. “How could they buy? What security can they put up when we control—”

  “But they have!” contradicted the image. “A buying bloc stood there and bought with gold. I saw it. They wheeled it in in hand-trucks. It was like a madhouse. What shall we do, sir? If they have more gold tomorrow, they will take over even more of Transport stock.”

  Paxton thought rapidly. He shuddered a little, seeing the golden color to which his hand had transmuted the tuning knob. He was suddenly sick at the thought and sight of gold. He forced himself to speak through clenched teeth.

  “
Rush planes to Fort Knox. Bring back gold. I’ll issue the warrant tonight. Buy the stock back—at any price!”

  He clicked off and faced around, his skin pale.

  “A rich gold mine must have been opened somewhere. With gold against me, anything can happen. They might even break the monopoly!”

  “We can’t let that happen. It would upset our whole program.” Gordy bit his lip. “Prevent that at any cost.”

  “Could this Dr. Strato be connected with it?” rumbled von Grenfeld, looking at Paxton’s hands.

  “Of course not,” snapped Gordy. “There is something bigger behind this than a puttering scientist who babbles about the Golden Touch and discovers some yellow fluorescent substance.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Hands of Iscariot

  RICHARD HALE laughed when he heard that last statement in his spy ray screen. Puttering scientist! What if Dr. Gordy had known that his every word, and all that had gone before, had been faithfully pouring into the puttering scientist’s ear? What would be their utter dumbfoundment to know the true story behind the mysterious buying in the stock exchange?

  For weeks Hale had been manufacturing his cheap gold from cheaper lead. Through roundabout channels he had contacted business men broken by the Five’s monopoly. He had given them gold like so much free dirt. His only instruction had been:

  “Buy out Transport, lock, stock and barrel, as fast as you can!”

  Soon Transport would crash as a monopoly. His buyers, men who sought vengeance themselves, would raid the market. They would buy at any price. They had a billion dollars in gold at hand, and Hale had promised unlimited reserves. The men had not questioned the miraculous appearance of new gold. Gold was gold, whether it came from hell itself. And revenge was revenge.

  In these dealings, Hale had kept his identity secret. It was not yet time to reveal himself, even as Dr. Strato. The Five would know less what to do while acting against an unknown agency. And Hale did not underestimate the Five’s powers. Once they knew, they would crack down viciously.