by Denis Hughes
She looked away quickly. “I know that,” she murmured. “Here, let me do the cooking!” She was suddenly bright with a forced cheerfulness that was almost painful to watch.
Bentick stood aside, watching her.
“Professor Dale is a busy man?” he queried presently. “What’s he doing at the moment? Something fantastic as usual?” His words were light, easy.
Carol turned and met his gaze. There was the same old shadow of fear behind her eyes that he’d seen before. It troubled him.
“I’m scared,” she said quietly. “I don’t quite know why, but I am. It—it’s like witchcraft or something. Seeing into the past and the future. Oh, it’s horrible!”
“Maybe it would help to tell me about it,” he said. “Scientists are inclined to be frightening. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I’ve heard that Dale is a little eccentric at times.”
“Yes,” she answered. “I’m sure he is! This latest invention of his, the Telecopter he calls it, can make an image of past events as well as seeing into the future. Can you imagine looking at a picture of what hasn’t happened yet? That’s what scares me so! And he’s dangerous as well. Things he said about the man you’re with; things that frightened me.” She stared at Bentick with widened eyes, afraid now that she’d said too much.
Bentick looked at her thoughtfully.
“You’d better be perfectly honest with me,” he told her. “If there’s anything going on, or likely to happen, which in any way endangers this man I’m guarding it’s up to you to tell me about it.”
“Professor Dale is fanatical about him,” she whispered. “He told me the man would be better dead, and when he said it there was something in his eyes that warned me. It can’t be connected with the Telecopter, of course, but it’s all very worrying.” She shivered suddenly, head tilted on one side, listening.
From somewhere far below their feet came the muted hum of machinery starting up. It rose to an eerie whine and steadied on a high-pitched note that was faint but insistent.
Bentick raised an eyebrow inquiringly.
“The generators,” Carol whispered. “That means he’s using power now. He’ll want it to test the Telecopter, so it looks as if he’s finished. He’s probably seeing things on the screen even now—things that have happened in that vault. Perhaps even things that will happen down there!” She sounded disturbed and troubled.
Bentick decided that the time had come to take some definite action. His feelings were torn between loyalty and the need to help Carol. And always there was Nargan in the background, an evil shadow if ever there was one.
“You and I might be able to assist each other,” said Bentick. “I don’t want to pry into your affairs or those of Professor Dale, but we must co-operate.”
She looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?” she asked quietly. “I can’t show you secret things if that’s what you want. They’re not mine to show.”
“I don’t want you to,” he answered. “But keep me informed of any developments that might affect my own particular job down here. That’s all I ask. It’s so important that personal loyalties must stand aside in a matter like this. You can, of course, have complete confidence in my discretion.”
“All right,” she breathed. “I’ll do that. It isn’t nice to spy on people you know so well, but I’ll keep an eye on my guardian just in case he shows signs of becoming dangerous towards Nargan. In return I know I can rely on you if I need any help myself, though I doubt if I shall.”
Bentick would have said a lot more had there not been an interruption. The door of the kitchen burst open and Nargan appeared, his sallow face creased in a frown that made Bentick remember his duty with a guilty start.
“Where is my food?” demanded Nargan angrily. “Am I to be starved as well as insulted in your cursed country? I have been here but a short time, yet already I hate the place and find it humiliating to a man of my position and importance. And what about acting as my bodyguard? You are worthless! I have been left to myself. My calls have gone unanswered, although I told you to stay within hearing!” He broke off and shook his fist at Bentick. “I shall have you broken for this!” he shouted. “The miserable men who employ you will hear about your complete disregard for my safety! You are negligent!”
Bentick contained his anger as best he could.
“I only left you to get your food,” he said.
Nargan snorted. “What is the girl for? To be an amusing ornament?”
“She was busy with other things,” said Bentick slowly. “Everything is ready now. If you will go to the dining room you can satisfy your hunger.”
Carol, too furious and injured to trust her voice, kept quiet. Bentick was glad, for he felt that she would only have made matters worse than they were by speaking. Taking advantage of the lull, he urged Nargan from the kitchen and took him along to the front of the house where a table was laid in a sunny room of graceful charm and the dignity of age.
Carol followed them, a tray in her hands. She said not a word as she served them, but when Bentick caught her eye she was looking far from happy. Nargan, brightening up considerably since the scene he had caused in the kitchen, made several remarks that made her flush before she could escape, and Bentick cursed the circumstances that prevented him from giving the man the hiding he deserved.
Their meal over, Nargan pushed back his chair and rose from the table.
“I go now to rest,” he announced. He had eaten in a gross, greedy fashion as was to be expected.
Bentick nodded gratefully. “I’ll be around,” he said. “You need have no fears of danger in this house. These people are as loyal as one could wish. I will call you at lunchtime if that is convenient. In the meantime I shall not be far away.”
“Don’t leave the house!” snapped Nargan. “There is no one I would like to trust in this country. Too many hate me for what I do, but soon I shall bring you all to heel as is fitting to a lesser nation!”
Bentick watched him venomously as he strutted from the room and thumped his way up the stairs with ponderous steps. Then he shrugged and wandered thoughtfully towards the kitchen, hoping that Carol might be there.
When he reached the place, however, there was no sign of the girl. He halted, staring curiously at the steel door that opened a way to the vault and laboratory. He knew that was where it led because Carol had come through it when she found him in the kitchen earlier on. There was something very intriguing about that door. Almost against his better judgment he moved towards it, drawn by curiosity and a desire to know what lay beyond.
The high-pitched note of the hidden generator was still singing in his ears. He wondered if Nargan had noticed it.
Before he could bring himself to open the door someone did it for him from the other side. He found himself staring into the pale face of Carol as she stood in the opening, watching him with slightly parted lips.
“Hello,” he said. “I was hoping I’d see you; that’s why I came here.”
She recovered her composure quickly. “The Professor sent me up for something,” she explained. “He’s already had results from the Telecopter. I haven’t seen them myself because he switched it off as soon as I went down, but I can tell something happened. There’s a kind of excitement in the way he speaks and looks at me with his eyes. It makes me frightened!”
“Anything I can do to help?” asked Bentick quietly.
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so,” she murmured. “I’m all right. Is Nargan happy now?”
Bentick grinned. “He’s probably sleeping off his breakfast by now!” he told her. “He’s the biggest swine I’ve met in years, but it can’t be helped. Frankly I’ll be very glad when tomorrow’s over and done, except that I may not see you again.”
She dropped her gaze at his words. They were standing close together on the stone-flagged floor of the kitchen. They were still like that when a figure appeared in the open steel door and halted, peering at them narrowly with an impish
expression on his face. It was Dale, head poked forward and white overall coat crumpled and stained.
Bentick jerked his head up and met the Professor’s gaze. It was the first time he had seen the man, and now he realised something of the fanaticism that drove him through life.
“Good morning,” said Dale in a voice that was little more than a croak. “I do not like visitors in my house as Carol has probably told you, and I like men like Nargan less than most, but I understand that his presence here is not your doing, young man. You are as welcome as anyone would be under the circumstances, which is not a great deal.” He paused, going on before Bentick could speak:
“But I forget myself! I came to find Carol, for the time has come when I cannot keep my secrets hidden any longer.”
Carol stared at him wordlessly for an instant. She had instinctively moved a little further away from Bentick, but now she edged closer to his side again.
Bentick said: “I hope your experiments are going successfully, Professor. You’ve been a greater benefactor to scientific advancement than any other living man. Is it too much to ask what your latest developments will mean to humanity?” He made a gesture. “Please don’t think me inquisitive.”
Dale grinned in a peculiarly wolfish fashion.
“Of course you are inquisitive!” he said. “It is a human trait. If I were not inquisitive I would not do the things I do. No man would!”
Bentick did not quite know what to say to that, so kept quiet instead. Dale went on:
“You are inquisitive! Of course you are. And I am sufficiently human myself to want to boast of what I have achieved. You and Carol shall see the results of my work!”
Carol gave a little gasp. Bentick frowned, puzzled.
“Come along down to the laboratory, both of you,” said Dale. It was more of a command than an invitation. “You will see things there that no other man but myself has had the privilege of seeing. I will show you the Past, but not the Dead Past, my friends! I have brought the Past to life in an image! I shall bring the Future into being in the same fashion. Follow me!”
Carol looked at Bentick as the Professor turned and started through the steel door again. Bentick gave her a smile of encouragement, but he himself was conscious of a quickening of his pulses as he realised that Dale meant to demonstrate the Telecopter to them. He should have felt proud to be included in the invitation, but instead he wondered if the things that this man was doing were wise.
As for Carol she was frightened.
Following the Professor closely the two of them entered the passage beyond the door and walked in Dale’s wake as the scientist led them along. Not once did the man glance back to see if they were coming. He took it for granted that they would.
At the head of the gallery steps overlooking the vault, however, he halted, turning to Carol.
“Prepare yourself,” he said tensely. “You will see the shadow of events which in their time have altered the history of this country! The Telecopter shall be proof!”
They descended the steps to the floor of the laboratory, Bentick staring round fascinated. Dale’s eyes were fixed on the Telecopter as he went towards it. There was a loving care in the way he fingered the switches as the other two watched him.
CHAPTER 5
PAST AND FUTURE
“Switch the lights off, my dear,” said Dale to Carol.
Bentick noticed then that there were electric light switches on the wall behind the girl. She turned and operated them so that the laboratory was in almost total darkness. Only a pilot light on the Telecopter machine glowed ruddily, illuminating Professor Dale’s features in an eerie manner.
Carol, having turned the lights off as she was bidden, shrank against Bentick in the gloom. He caught a glimpse of her face, a small white blur at his shoulder. Her whole attention was riveted on the Telecopter.
“Now!” breathed Dale. “Now you will see!”
The large opalescent screen of the machine glowed with a bluish flicker, then steadied to a more even light between blue and green. Flashes crossed it at intervals. As they did so the Professor was mumbling to himself, the presence of his audience completely forgotten.
Suddenly the screen changed. Dale bent closer to the front of the machine. His fingers worked fast on the controls as he sought for what he wanted. Bentick, fascinated by the whole business, stared till his eyes ached with the strain. There was darkness on the screen for an instant. When it cleared Bentick saw what appeared to be figures, moving here and there as if seen through a mist.
Carol at his side caught her breath in a whisper of something close to fear.
Dale made further adjustments to the machine. He was lost to all other considerations beyond his own achievements.
The figures on the screen became clear. They turned from shadows to men. It might have been a film of some scene in history. Bentick was not very sure of his facts, but thought the clothes they wore belonged to the Tudor period. And then he noticed another curious thing. The setting of the image was none other than the vault in which they all stood so tensely. Everything was there. The stone floor, the steps to the gallery with its heavy balustrade, the vaulted roof partly lost in gloom. All that was missing was the jumble of modern apparatus that filled the place now.
Dale broke in on his thoughts. Still gazing at the image on the Telecopter screen he said:
“A scene from history! A scene enacted here in this very place hundreds of years ago and brought to life by the eyes of the Telecopter! Eyes that can see through the Past and into the Future! Is it not incredible? And I have created this wonder!”
“It’s certainly amazing, Professor,” murmured Bentick cautiously. “What is that picture? Do you know?”
As he spoke he was watching the moving figures on the screen. There were seven of them, all men. They moved stealthily, gathering together in a group in the centre of the big crypt floor. There they stood, heads together, sometimes glancing across their shoulders as if fearing an interruption.
Dale said: “You may know from history that a great conspiracy was hatched in this place. The assassination of a famous man was planned within these very walls. What you see now at this moment is the cosmic reflection of the actual meeting. Had it not been for that meeting, and the plans that were laid by the men you can see before you, this nation would never have been so great as it is. History would have taken a different course, and England might well have fallen.”
Bentick could not help a sense of awe as he watched and listened. It was true that he had heard of the grim events that Dale had spoken of. But to see them taking place! It was almost beyond comprehension.
Aloud he said: “Where did the actual murder occur?”
“Down here, where you stand,” answered the Professor calmly. “Presently I shall show you. I have not yet completely mastered the technique of searching Time for the events I wish to see. Later I shall be adept at the game!”
Bentick tried to tear his eyes from the screen of the Telecopter. He found it almost impossible. He found his own mind being instilled with the sensation of conspiracy that obviously enthralled the men whose images he saw. It was as if the very fact of seeing that picture was drawing his own soul into it, drawing him back through Time till he felt he was a part of that scene. It was uncanny, yet he could not fight against it.
Only the sudden whisper from Carol succeeded in shaking him out of the Past.
“He must die!” she breathed. “It will be for England if he dies, do you understand?”
Bentick shivered at the sound of her words. He made a superhuman effort and turned to look at her. In the dim light her face was expressionless, her eyes fixed straight on the screen as his own had been. Her lips were moving, but she seemed to be in a kind of trance as if her mind was no longer her own.
“Turn that thing off, Professor!” said Bentick sharply. “Miss Collins isn’t well. There’s something queer about your Telecopter. Turn it off!”
Dale seemed to stiffen at th
e words. He turned very slowly and reluctantly as Bentick finished speaking. Then his hand reached out and cut the master switches. The screen went dead and blank. At the same time Bentick put up his hand to the electric light switches. The laboratory was flooded with brilliance. Bentick felt strangely thankful that everything was the same as it had been. He was almost afraid of the effect that shimmering screen had had on his mind. There was something evil about it, and Dale, too, became a figure of indefinable menace.
“What is that you say?” demanded Dale. “Carol not well? I don’t understand! She looks all right to me!”
Bentick glanced sideways at the girl. She was looking round in a dazed fashion. Then she shook herself violently and smiled at the Professor.
“Of course I’m all right!” she said brightly. “It was nothing. Just a slight touch of dizziness, that’s all.”
Dale grunted, but Bentick eyed her curiously. There was something queer about the Telecopter, he thought. He’d have to watch things or there’d be trouble in some unforeseeable way before long. Dale, he decided, was very close to insanity. He didn’t like the situation it was likely to create, but there was little he himself could do about it at the present. Maybe a tactful word to Cain when he got back to London might come in useful. The girl should not be with Dale in any event.
But before he could say a word, and before Dale himself could open his mouth to speak again, there was a shout from the top of the gallery steps. It was Nargan, and the man was shouting angrily to know what on earth Bentick thought he was doing by deserting his post when at any moment there might be danger from some hidden quarter.
Bentick hesitated. He was on the point of making a furious retort, but saw the futility of it before it was too late.
Professor Dale smiled vindictively. “Your friend appears to be a man of temper and bad manners,” he said smoothly. “I think perhaps you had better look after him.” In an undertone he added: “Get him out of here at all costs. Do you hear?” There was a threat in his tone that Bentick was quick to heed.