by Denis Hughes
Before Bentick could raise a hand to the door it was opened from inside, swinging back on soundless hinges to reveal a dark haired girl in a white overall.
“We’ve been expecting you,” she said quite simply. “Come in, will you? Professor Dale is busy at the moment, but asked me to see you comfortably settled.” She broke off, eyeing Bentick gravely.
Bentick smiled and turned to Nargan, but the foreigner was already thrusting past him to the hall.
“I need a bath and a meal at once,” he announced. “It is a privilege for you to serve me.”
The girl’s face altered abruptly at the words. She glanced at Bentick inquiringly, but he only shook his head very slightly in answer to her questioning look. Then she recovered quickly and stepped back to let them through.
As Nargan passed her he leaned towards her face and showed his teeth in a grin. They were yellow teeth, one of them broken.
“Perhaps my stay in your wretched country will not be so unpleasant as I thought it would be!” he said. His voice was thick and sensuous. Then he patted the girl on the arm and strode further into the hall.
Bentick, furious at the man’s behaviour, was helpless. He saw the anger that flamed on the face of the girl, but to speak to Nargan about his manners would be asking for trouble.
The girl took them up the stairs and threw open the door of a large room, from which a bathroom and smaller bedroom could be reached from inside.
“I hope you will be comfortable,” she said in a tight sort of voice. “Everything is ready for you, and I am given to understand that another visitor is expected at noon tomorrow?”
Nargan gave a nod, stared round the room with a sniff, and slammed the door in Bentick’s face.
“Stay within call!” he shouted through the door. “If I need you I will tell you.”
Bentick leant against the wall and rubbed a hand across his forehead. Then his eyes met those of the girl. Quite suddenly they grinned at each other.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Bentick, “He’s in my charge, you know, but I can’t very well be responsible for the way he behaves.”
Her face straightened quickly. “It’s not your fault,” she said. She started walking down the corridor, away from Nargan’s suite. Bentick hesitated, then followed her.
At the head of the stairs she paused, turning slightly.
“We’d better introduce ourselves,” said Bentick. He told her his name, then waited. This girl impressed him enormously, but he was not quite sure that she was happy. The ghost of a shadow had flitted past her eyes on more than one occasion since he and Nargan arrived. It was a shadow of fear he had seen, not the distaste that Nargan instilled in her mind. He was curious about her.
“I answer to Carol Collins,” she told him with a smile. “The professor is my guardian, you know. I work in the laboratory most of the time, and I’ve got to go back there now. Will you be all right on your own? Just find your way round. I’m afraid there aren’t any servants—we can never keep them long.” She grinned cheerily. “I don’t think they like my guardian,” she added. “He’s a strange man, but you’ll probably meet him later on.”
Once again Bentick thought he saw that shadow of fear that crossed her face.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m quite capable of looking after myself. I’ll see you again soon though. Maybe you could show me around when you have the time?”
“I’ll be pleased to,” she answered a little stiffly. Then she turned on her heel and walked down the stairs, leaving Bentick at the top with a puzzled frown on his face.
CHAPTER 3
THE TELECOPTER
While Bentick was still standing at the head of the stairs wondering about the girl, Carol Collins, she herself had crossed the hall and entered the vast and cavernous kitchen of the house. In the far corner was a closed steel door that looked out of place in such a domestic room as this.
Carol opened the door and glanced across her shoulder before going through. Then she was walking along a stone flagged passage to a flight of steps leading downwards. The passage was lit by naked electric light bulbs spaced at intervals along its length. It was cold and bare, with a monastic severity that made the girl shiver slightly though she had passed this way more times than she could remember.
Beneath the house was a crypt, converted by her guardian to a laboratory in which he spent most of his time. The house stood on the site of an ancient monastery, so that the crypt was of even greater age than the building above it. To Carol it was a place of ghosts and the haunting past. Only because loyalty bound her to Dale did she stay there and help him in his work. Sometimes that work frightened her. It did so now, for Dale was a man to whom science was religion. Nothing was sacred in his eyes but the eternal probing after truth and the hidden things beyond it.
Had Bentick realised this he would have understood the fear that had flickered across Carol’s eyes as he watched her and talked to her.
The vaulted crypt was a gloomy, mysterious place. Its roof was high and almost lost in the shadows above the glaring lamps that lit it. A gallery ran round its walls on three sides, but this, too, was dark and shrouded in gloom. Masses of complicated apparatus stood on every side, so that almost the entire floor space was occupied by something or other.
In the middle of this varied collection was a bent shouldered figure with snow white hair and heavy brows. His features were keen and rugged, but his piercing eyes held a fanatical gleam as he worked.
Carol paused halfway down the steps and watched him for a moment. She reached the point where the steps joined the gallery before continuing down to the floor. Resting one hand on the cold stone balustrade, she hesitated. Professor Dale’s latest invention scared her. She was bound to admit that to herself, yet something stronger than her own will kept her there to help him. She was frightened, but had to go on.
Bracing herself, she started down the steps to the floor and walked across to where Professor Dale was working on a machine that might have been some futuristic television set. It stood higher than a man, and had a broad, curving screen that was whitish in colour and opalescent. Below the screen was a complicated switchboard, and rising from above it were massive insulators that capped another maze of electronic equipment.
Dale made an adjustment and straightened up, peering at what he had done. Only then did he become aware of the girl who was coming towards him.
He turned, poking his head out from between his shoulders inquisitively.
“Has our visitor arrived?” he asked in a cracked, high tone of voice. “I hope he will be comfortable, my dear!” There was a kind of half concealed sneer behind the words.
Carol said nothing for a moment. She was fully alive to her guardian’s dislike of any outsider who came to the house. What his views on Nargan were she did not know, but had guessed that the man would not be welcome under any circumstances.
“I think they will be all right,” she answered slowly.
“They?” echoed Dale impatiently. “Am I to understand that there is more than one stranger in my house? I shall get in touch with London at once!”
“There is a second man,” she told him soothingly. “He is English, and is only here to safeguard the foreigner. They will both be gone by tomorrow night.” She went to Dale’s side, meeting his eyes appealingly. “Please don’t cause a disturbance. The foreigner may be unpleasant, but I understand that so much depends on this meeting that to anger the man would be fatal.” Her eyes flamed.
“He is worse than a beast, but I myself am ready to be polite for the short time he’s here. Don’t make it any more difficult than it is.”
Professor Dale eyed her sternly. Then he shrugged.
“This Nargan is dangerous,” he whispered. “It is a grave mistake on the part of our government to hand him secrets in exchange for anything. Whatever we give will eventually be used against us, not against a common enemy.” As he spoke his voice rose higher and higher till he was almost shouting.
“Q
uieter!” said Carol desperately. “Quiet, or the man may hear you!”
“I would like to see him dead!” spat the professor. “His country is no real friend of ours. They say it would lead to war if any harm befell him, but I would sooner see that than the danger ahead if things go on as planned.”
The girl drew away from him, eyes wide with instinctive horror at the thoughts that rose in her mind. She saw madness in the face of Dale, and she knew there was peril in his words. What could she do? Should she warn Bentick to be on his guard against the very man whose home was the scene of this vital meeting? If she did it might mean the end of her guardian’s scientific research on behalf of Britain. She knew he was a valuable man, and although she feared him, she could not quite bring herself to throw any suspicion on him.
She felt helpless and suddenly cowed. All she could do was turn away so as to avoid the gleam in Dale’s crazy eyes. She did not feel fear for herself, but for what might grow from the words he had used.
To cover her feelings she changed the subject abruptly.
“Is your invention nearly finished?” she asked in a voice that was none too steady. She gestured with one hand to the apparatus Dale had been working on when she arrive in the crypt.
Instantly the scientist was eager. All thoughts of Nargan were swept from his brain, for this machine he was perfecting was the child of his most advanced theories and researches.
“It is almost completed!” he told Carol. Turning towards the apparatus lovingly, he laid a hand on its cold steel framework. His fingers touched the dials and switches as if they were made of gold.
Carol said: “What will you call it?”
“The Telecopter,” murmured Dale. He might have been mentioning the name of something sacred. To him the machine was sacred, a deity created by himself.
Carol frowned in a puzzled fashion.
“Telecopter?” she echoed wonderingly. “What can a name like that stand for? I don’t understand.”
Although she worked in the laboratory and helped he guardian with most of his experiments there were many things which Professor Dale kept secret to himself. Carol had been watching the growth of his latest invention, but Dale had dropped no hint of its potentialities or purpose. Now the girl was genuinely curious, whereas before she had merely been vaguely intrigued as to what it was.
Dale beamed at her shrewdly. His eyes were bright with enthusiasm as he stroked the Telecopter.
“You do not understand?” he murmured softly. “Then perhaps I will tell you something about it. Quite soon now you will be able to see some results, but before you do I will make the idea behind the Telecopter plain for you.”
Carol was conscious of a wave of fear as she listened. There was something uncanny in the Professor’s voice, as if he was playing with things better left alone.
“Please do,” she whispered.
Dale stepped away from the machine and stared at it unseeingly for an instant. Then:
“The principle is based on cosmic radiations in the time-space continuum,” he said. “You must understand that every minute event which takes place on earth and in the universe sends out emanations in the form of cosmic echoes. These echo waves as I call them are circulating through space and will continue to do so indefinitely. In space, remember, there is nothing to impede their existence. For as long as the universe continues those cosmic echoes will be broadcast in perpetual waves that nothing can stop.”
He broke off, forehead furrowed, deep in thought. Carol licked her lips apprehensively. She said not a word, waiting for Dale to carry on,
“As you know,” he continued, “I have been experimenting for some time past in an attempt to receive these echo waves of past events which I mentioned. The Telecopter is the outcome of my work!”
“But I still don’t quite see...” Carol stopped.
Dale peered at her narrowly. “You will!” he said in a thin-edged voice. “You will! With the Telecopter I can show you a clear picture on its screen of anything that happened in this vault since it was dug from the rock.”
Carol nodded dumbly. What Dale spoke of smacked of trickery, yet she knew he was genuine enough in the promises he made—especially where science was concerned.
“Telecopter,” she mused. “A televising optic that can see back through Time. Is that what it means?”
Dale inclined his head gravely. “You put it as exactly as I could myself,” he answered.
“But I don’t see what good it will be,” protested Carol obstinately. “How will it benefit humanity if they can see into the past? You say it could show what has happened in this vault, but what good would that be? I know there was an assassination down here years and years ago, and they say it altered history, but it won’t help the world very much even if they can see it happening as it did.”
Dale smiled in a pitying fashion.
“My child,” he said quietly, “there is much you do not understand. At the moment I admit that the Telecopter can only show events as they happened in the exact spot on which it stands, but in time I shall perfect it so that not only will it produce an image of some happening in any part of the world, but I hope to advance my work to such an extent that the future will also be visible before it occurs. You must realise, of course, that even events which have not yet happened are already foreshadowed in the fabric of space. If I can gather them in and translate them onto the screen then nothing will be hidden from me.” He paused, watching her closely. Then: “ I have every hope that the Telecopter in its present form will see beyond the moment in which we are living. It should be able to receive near-future events at any rate, and by tonight I shall know if my work has been successful!”
Carol stared at the machine in awe. She had not realised what it stood for till now. Somehow the notion of being able to see future events was horrible. To see the past re-enacted would be bad enough, besides being a waste of time, but to see the future before it happened! Her mind boggled at the very idea of it.
Professor Dale went on watching her.
“You do not believe, do you, my child?” he said quietly. “I will prove it to you shortly. When such an incredible advance as this is made by science it is something that no man can keep to himself! Others must share the triumph!”
Carol found she could say nothing. She wanted to be alone, to have time to think. She wished there was someone to whom she could talk in a sensible manner. She thought of Bentick somewhere upstairs. He looked like a straight thinking man, and an honest one, but she had no right to trouble him with this kind of worry. Besides, she still felt a certain loyalty towards Dale in spite of the dread and fear he put in her mind.
She managed to smile a little, but could not bring herself to look the professor full in the eyes when she did it.
“It sounds…exciting,” she murmured. “I—I hope it works as well as you expect.” She broke off, searching for an excuse to escape. “I must go upstairs again now. Our visitors will want a meal.” She turned and hurried from the crypt without another word.
CHAPTER 4
CONFIDENCES
Professor Dale stood against the Telecopter, one hand on its smooth steel case, fingers drumming as his eyes followed Carol’s figure across the floor of the vault and up the steps to the gallery before she disappeared. Then he shrugged and turned back to his work, poring over detailed plans that lay on a littered bench.
Carol reached the big kitchen at the end of the stone passage and halted abruptly.
Grinning at her cheerfully from the other side of the room was Bentick, a frying pan in one hand and a plate of bacon in the other.
“Hello,” he said before she could find her voice. “I do hope you won’t mind, but you did say I should find my own way round.” He broke off and jerked his head towards the door. “My charge is getting hungry,” he added. “I’ve discovered that when that happens he becomes difficult to handle.”
The girl relaxed. Some of the tension flowed from her mind. This man was refreshing,
she thought. There was something very solid and reliable about him. She liked him instinctively.
“So you started cooking,” she laughed. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve just left the laboratory to come and look after you. You’ll have to forgive us, Mr. Bentick, but we aren’t an awfully hospitable household I’m afraid. At least, my guardian isn’t, which makes it rather difficult for me.”
He looked at her sharply for a second. She was not a happy person, he decided. He would have liked to do something to help her, but thrusting himself on her life was something he could not do. If she needed help the seeking must come from her side.
Aloud he said: “For heaven’s sake don’t worry about it. I’m perfectly capable of fending for myself if you’re busy. This job isn’t a pleasant one, but it’s got to be done, so I’m ready to make the best of it.” He gave her a rueful smile and set down the frying pan as she came across.
“Is there anything I can do to make it easier for you?” she asked surprisingly. “I’ve a hunch that there might be. This man, Nargan. The Professor told me something about him. He’s important, isn’t he? I don’t envy you your work because he’s so unpleasant.”
Bentick eyed her shrewdly.
“I’ll be frank,” he said. “I hate the man. He was insufferable to you, but I could not do a thing about it then. If I ever have the chance I’ll pay him back in kind, but until this business is over I’m afraid I’ve just got to toe the line and watch his disgusting behaviour.” He smiled. “For the good of the country, you understand? For continued peace on earth.”