by C. Daly King
Michael Lord sat up straighter yet. ‘You interest me, Craven,’ he acknowledged sincerely. ‘I should like to have you go on very much indeed, and don’t be too sure about my being hypnotised. I don’t claim to be a genius in any sense, but it happens that in a couple of my cases I have been thrown into several fields of theory, psychology and economics, for instance. In addition, I chance to have a fairly broad, general acquaintance with modern science.’
‘Yes, that’s what I meant. I have no doubt you would believe anything a “scientist” told you.’ The novelist pondered briefly, then shrugged. ‘Well, you will see. You really are hypnotised, you know; but it will pass the time . . . However, if I’m to tell you what I think about your case, you will have to let me go what may seem a little far afield, to begin with. I shall have to acquaint you with an aspect of the situation that I don’t think you know.’
‘Glad to hear of it.’ Lord nodded, and the other drew several times on his pipe before continuing.
‘Wotan Mann,’ he said then. ‘I am entirely unknown to the Cutters, to all of them, but I have met Mann. Met him on a hunting trip once. You probably know that he is separated from his wife, who is the sister of the man who has been killed, and I suppose, though I am not sure, the mother of the two young ladies who are with us. Now, Wotan Mann is not as bad as he has been painted, by a long throw. He likes women, yes; but then they like him, too. And he has a terrific temper. Any woman who married him with the idea that she’d have a domesticated husband around the premises must be quite stupid enough to deserve a rude awakening. Not that I’m saying Anne Cutter expected to find him tame; his quarrel, as I made it out, was with her brothers rather than with her.
‘We made a longish trek together, and he told me a good part of the story, for there’s nothing like a camp fire late at night to bring out confidences. To make it brief, his side of it was that his brothers-in-law were a pair of moralistic prudes – although he had a stronger name for them – who interfered between him and his wife. According to him she was quite content with his wanderings, both geographical and erotic, because he always came back from them sooner or later; but she was a somewhat weak personality, and the brothers, forever at her, began by causing quarrels, and finally succeeded in bringing about a definite estrangement. He resented this the more, inasmuch as he confessed to an unusually strong attachment to his eldest daughter, and if that is she up forward, I can well understand it. He was also, I believe, sincerely fond of his wife, and had no desire whatever to abandon her, except temporarily.
‘As I said, Wotan Mann has a dangerous and uncontrollable temper; when he goes into a rage he is a killer. I have seen him in a rage and I have seen him kill. I have also seen him sit and brood for an hour or longer when something angered him; then, like a flash, he jumps up and fights. When that man hates, he hates so violently that one can feel a definite physical emotion from his presence.
‘I may add that he resented very strongly what he called the meddling of the Cutter brothers in his life. His bitterness against them was extreme, and I am certain that the full force of his hatred was turned in their – ‘
Craven broke off as the cockpit door opened and the junior pilot stood in the entrance. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he called; and all conversations ceased abruptly as the passengers looked toward him, startled.
The pilot smiled. He said, ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. Nothing is wrong. We are about to land at Cheyenne. It is the highest airport on the North American Continent, over 6000 feet in altitude. We must therefore land at a much higher speed than usual, since at this altitude the air is less dense and has less ability to support the ’plane. I want to make sure that everyone’s safety belt is properly adjusted for the landing. It is also necessary that the cabin lights be extinguished while we land; it will only be for a few minutes . . . Will you kindly adjust your belts? The stewardess will inspect them and report to me.’
The pilot’s head withdrew and he closed the door.
6058 FEET
In the brilliant glare of the airport Captain Lord ushered the passengers carefully from their second ’plane to the third. He counted them out and counted them in, permitting no more than the short walk to where the new ship waited, a glistening silver bird under the bright lights, in all respects like the one they had just quitted; and then Lord locked the cabin door.
The Cheyenne airport was enormous; lines operated from it to north, south, east, west, south-west, northwest, north-east. ’Planes arrived and departed continuously. It was also the main operating base of the Amalgamated system, with the result that it was the assistant manager of the line who presently made his appearance.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked cheerfully when he had found the detective. He motioned to the ’plane that would carry them farther. ‘We have just substituted 90 for 77, the ship that would have gone out ordinarily. 90 is a new ship; it has been thoroughly tested, of course, and we have been tuning it up all day. You’ll find it in perfect shape, I think.’
When they came to transfer the surgeon’s body, the manager’s jaw dropped. ‘My God!’ he ejaculated. ‘Have you had violence on the ’plane? Is the man dead?’
Lord indicated the ashen features under the heavy blankets on the stretcher. ‘He looks it, doesn’t he?’ he asked grimly. As the lashings were made fast, inspected, tightened again here and there, he added, ‘The next stop is Salt Lake City, I understand. How long will it take us to reach there?’
‘Three hours, almost exactly.’
‘Well, that’s all right. He’ll be safe in there, will he?’
‘We’ll make sure he is.’ The manager climbed into the new baggage compartment and checked all the lashings himself. As he dropped to the ground again, he swung his arms briskly in the cold air and rubbed his hands together. ‘You may find it a little rough over the Rockies to-night. There are some storms around, too, farther on, although you ought to miss them, but you needn’t worry about the stretcher; I’ll guarantee it won’t budge an inch, or the man on it, either. We have to fasten things down tight in this service, and we know how to do it . . . I gave you the duplicate keys to the doors, didn’t I, and took the keys to 59?’
As they rounded the tail of the ’plane (where a mechanic stood on guard, as did another at the nose) they saw a telegraph boy at the cabin door. Lord walked up quickly.
‘Telegram for Dr Amos Cutter.’
‘Yes, Dr Cutter is on this ’plane. I’ll take it.’
He tore open the yellow envelope. ‘Operation successful,’ he read. ‘Patient’s condition critical, but every hope for recovery. MacKenzie.’
Stuffing the form into his pocket, he looked up to find that the managers had been joined by the two new pilots. Introductions were effected. ‘Lannings . . . Lovett . . . Captain Lord of the New York Police ... Of course, they’ve nicknamed Lannings “Happy.” ‘
Lord found himself looking into two tanned faces. Piercing blue eyes above a long nose and lean jaw; that was Lannings, the senior pilot. Lovett’s eyes were brown and his face chubbier, but both men were tall.
Lannings drew the manager slightly aside. ‘The storm at Rock Springs is clearing,’ he said in a low voice, ‘but there is light snow at Parco and cloudy at Medicine Bow. Ceiling’s only 2000 there now. We had better get started. I think we can pass Parco before it gets bad, if we leave right away.’
The little stewardess was coming across the field from the Administration Building, her arms loaded with fresh Thermos flasks and boxes. Behind her a porter bore a heaping pile of blankets.
‘Hello, Hal,’ she greeted the junior pilot. He grinned happily. ‘ ‘Lo, Margy. I’m glad it’s you. Lucky transfer, this trip.’ The girl smiled back at him.
Lord was glad to open the door and enter the warm cabin. Despite his overcoat the cold winds blowing across the open spaces of the airport had chilled him uncomfortably. The belts were adjusted and the stewardess was just about to turn off the lights when the noise of the motors
, rising to taxi the ’plane out on the field, fell abruptly, as the big propellers idled. In the comparative quiet there was knocking on the cabin door.
Lord opened it, at a word from the stewardess, to find another telegraph boy outside. This time the envelope was blue and the telegram addressed to the detective. ‘Did you receive previous wire. Is all well. Please answer 216 West Ninety-Seventh Street. Gesell.’
Another telegram from the little German. Lord remembered, with a start of compunction, that he had not answered the first one. ‘Have you a blank?’ he asked the boy.
The boy hadn’t; he had left his blanks behind when running out to catch the ’plane. ‘I’ll get one in a minute, sir.’
The junior pilot had come back through the cabin. ‘Sorry,’ he advised the detective, ‘but we shall have to leave now. Can’t wait for him. We’ve got to beat some weather.’
‘That’s all right. Never mind, boy.’ Lord closed the door. ‘It’s not important. I can send it later.’
Now the lights were out, the ship bumping across the ground. Then came the deep-throated roar as Lannings gave both motors the gun. Smoothness replaced the bumps; the ’plane began a long climb upward. As it swung above the first of the mountain ranges, it picked up the Laramie beacon, north-west.
9200 FEET
Supper was finished high above jagged peaks. It was not a lengthy affair, rather resembling the luncheon in its courses; moreover, a tumultuous wind was sweeping across the Rockies, and the transport, big as it looked on the ground, was none too steady in the vast spaces it now traversed. No one ate very much.
Some of the seats had been changed again. Dr Pons now sat beside Fonda Mann at the forward end of the cabin and Tinkham, who had gotten in last, had taken the chair opposite Lord at the rear. He sat in a stony silence, his face set in cold lines. Since his earlier clash with the detective he had addressed no word to him, and apparently had no intention of doing so. As before, Craven occupied the chair directly ahead of Lord.
The latter turned to the novelist. ‘We were interrupted,’ he pointed out, ‘by landing at Cheyenne. You were telling me your view of this case, and, I believe you said, were about to show that I was hypnotised.’
‘You put it a bit bluntly,’ Craven smiled. ‘But–well, I think I had rather finished telling you about Wotan Mann.’
‘You said you understood the means by which the poison bulb singled out Dr Cutter, I think?’ Lord suggested.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Perhaps you will tell me now. Who gave Dr Cutter the bulb?’
‘Why, you did, old boy. I thought you admitted that yourself.’
Across the aisle Hood Tinkham, for all his assumed withdrawal, might have bent slightly toward the conversationalists. He continued to stare straight ahead, but Lord, who was still observing everyone he could, suspected, perhaps unjustly, that his ears were alert to catch the words opposite.
‘You believe that I poisoned Cutter?’ Lord continued to Craven.
‘No, no, of course not. Why all these fantastic suppositions?’
‘But you say I gave him the poisoned bulb.’
‘I said you gave him the bulb. Unless I am mistaken, that is the plain fact. I did not say you gave him poison.’
Opposite them Tinkham unfastened his safety belt, got up, and without a glance in Lord’s direction made his way unsteadily into the little lavatory behind. The detective watched him go, watched the tiny door close after him. In a flash he was on his feet and, leaning across the aisle, had snapped open the assistant’s small bag, reposing on the chair opposite. He looked quickly within, withdrew his hand. In a moment he was back in his own seat and going on with Craven as if nothing had happened.
‘But Dr Cutter inhaled that bulb and was poisoned.’
‘Well, well,’ Craven responded, ‘where is your common sense, man? You gave him the bulb. The bulb was not poisoned because you were the last person in the world to attack the man you were specifically guarding, but when he inhaled it he inhaled poison; therefore, the gas in the bulb was poisoned after you gave it to him but before he inhaled it.’
Michael Lord said slowly, ‘I gave him the bulb. He put it into his handkerchief and broke it immediately. There was no time for anyone to monkey with it – not even Cutter himself.’
‘How long a time do you think, Captain, is required for the completion of a chemical reaction?’
‘That depends upon the reaction in question. Some, of course, take place in a few instants, once the critical point is reached.’
‘So then there was plenty of time for the gas in the bulb to undergo a reaction. It probably did not react until it was actually in his nostrils.’
Lord was completely puzzled. He played for a moment with the notion of a gas so prepared that it would remain innocuous until in contact with human nostrils, but that, again, would involve a specially prepared bulb. Or – ‘
‘Then why did not this gas react in a similar fashion in the nostrils of the rest of us?’
‘Because there was no force present to bring about the reaction.’
‘And such a force was present in Cutter’s case? What was this force? Where did it come from?’
‘It was,’ the novelist told him soberly, ‘the very violent, the very malignant hatred of Wotan Mann.’
‘Ah! Ah, yes, I see.’ Lord leaned back in his seat. ‘Are you a Christian Scientist, Craven?’
The other burst into a frank laugh. ‘Good heavens, no, Captain. I am merely a man whose common sense, by some fortunate chance, has not been hypnotised by the current scientific superstitions.’
‘It is evident, at any rate, that you believe thought can influence matter.’
‘Now there is just what I should call a gross instance of superstition, Captain, if I may say so. I don’t know what thought is, and I haven’t the foggiest notion as to what you may mean by matter. I am also sure that you don’t know, yourself. If you will dip into a few books by modern physicists, you will find that they possess no remotely intelligible description of “matter.” You said you were acquainted with modern psychology, I think? Then you must know that psychological discussions of thought do not even make verbal sense . . . The fact is, y’know, that we exist in a unitary world where everything bears some relation, however remote, to everything else. There are no such opposites as the material and the immaterial; there is the more or less homogeneous realm of the material-immaterial, or of the immaterial-material, if you prefer it that way. In other words, there is no thought and there is no matter; what exists is thought-matter or matter-thought. Ours is a hyphen existence.’
‘What you describe is a somewhat complex view,’ Lord observed, reaching out a hand to steady himself as the ’plane took a sudden drop and bumped. ‘Professor Didenot, our philosopher, ought to be interested.’
‘Philosophers,’ chuckled Craven. ‘No, thank you. They’re the most superstitious of the lot. They have a fashion now of “accepting the findings of modern science.” That means that they accept a smattering of pseudo-science and build an airy structure of speculation on that doubtful foundation. Result, there isn’t any philosophy nowadays at all; there is only a little bad science embellished with primitive, traditional beliefs . . . Y’know, Captain, we’re havin’ a bit of weather now.’ He nodded toward the windows across the narrow cabin.
Lord glanced at his own window, then pressed his face against it, cupping his hands around his eyes. In the light streaming out from behind him he saw snowflakes streaking past; tiny flakes in their thousands and thousands, with occasionally a little hailstone pinging against the ’plane. The flakes that struck the glass wetted it, started to freeze and melted, the drops running across the window almost horizontally in the wind tearing past the ’plane.
10,800 FEET
In the dark cockpit Lannings’ face wore a serious expression as he turned the ship over to Lovett, drew on his earphones, plucked the microphone from his pocket.
He pressed the transmitter button. �
�Amalgamated 90 calling Lieutenant Philips in escort ’plane. Amalgamated 90 calling Lieutenant Philips, calling Lieutenant Philips.’
At the second call the answer crackled in Lannings’ ears. ‘All right, 90, this is Philips. What will you have?’
‘Can you see us, Philips?’
‘Lost you about a minute ago, 90. Hope to pick you up again between flurries. I am flying at 11,300 north-west by west. Almost no visibility now.’
‘Are you equipped for blind flying?’
‘Hell, no. I can just get the directional beacon, though. I’ll pick you up again, 90.’
‘We will keep in touch with you every few minutes. Visibility fading out here. You had better go to 15,000, Philips; we are going up to 12,500. Our air speed now approximately 150 m.p.h., course north-west by west, 10,800, and going up. This is Lannings in 90, Lannings in 90.’
‘Okay, 90. Afraid of ice higher, but I’ll try it. Keep in touch. This is Philips, this is Philips.’
‘Okay, Philips.’ Lannings released the button, but kept the transmitter in his hand. He stared ahead into blankness, the little hailstones whispering over the glass above his head.
11,900 FEET
‘Nothing much we can do about it,’ Lord observed, inspecting the buckle of his safety belt. ‘Can’t say I’m fond of these bumps we’re getting, but I might as well hear the rest of your story. I take it you believe that Mann’s hatred of Cutter was so violent that it actually affected the gas Cutter was inhaling. It’s hardly a case I could take into court, but it’s highly original – I’ll say that for it.’
The novelist encircled the back of his chair with a long arm and braced a foot against the floor. ‘Oh, no, you can’t take it into court.’ He grinned. ‘If you could have done, I should not have told you, for my sympathies happen to be with Mann in the matter . . . But you compliment me too highly with originality. Have you never heard of Charles Fort, Captain? His was one of the very few free minds in the world to-day. I happen to be a Fortean.’