Murder Foretold

by Denis Hughes

  In a moment he had hurried to the steps and was running up them to the gallery where Nargan waited, too angry to take much notice of his surroundings.

  Bentick had all his work cut out to soothe the foreigner sufficiently to lead him quietly back to his own part of the house, and when eventually he did so he realised he ought not to leave him again, at least until he was asleep that night. But thoughts of Carol alone with Professor Dale and the Telecopter troubled him. He determined to see her again as soon as he could and make sure she was all right. He might even urge her to leave the house, for with Dale he felt positive that danger threatened.

  Meanwhile Carol was still in the laboratory with Dale.

  She was shaken by her experience when watching the Telecopter screen, but gave no sign of it to her guardian. Dale, on the other hand, was curious about her in a strangely analytical fashion. Although he had said there was nothing wrong with her he himself had sensed something of the things she had experienced. He began to feel that his latest invention might have even greater possibilities than he had hitherto visualised. Carol was his guinea pig, and he did not mean to lose her.

  While he busied himself at his bench, studying plans and occasionally making a minor adjustment to the Telecopter, his mind was working along hidden paths. When he finally spoke to the girl his voice was mild to the point of being gentle.

  “You like the young man upstairs, don’t you, my dear?” he said. “He is a good looking person.” He broke off. Then: “I think that perhaps you are a little in love with him already.”

  Carol tossed her head. “Don’t be absurd!” she snapped. “I hardly know him! He hasn’t been in the house more than a few hours.”

  Dale smiled knowingly. “Perhaps not,” he mused. “Perhaps not, child, but I wonder what the future could tell us. I really do wonder sometimes, you know.”

  Carol caught her breath and bit her lower lip. She was afraid of Dale and his Telecopter. There was no escaping its threat, she felt.

  She kept silent, watching the Professor doubtfully. Dale moved across to the machine again, smiling to himself in a sinister manner that filled her with fear.

  “Yes,” he murmured softly. “Yes, I really do wonder what the future could hold. Shall we try to find out?”

  “No!” The single word was wrung from Carol’s lips as if to ward off some nameless peril.

  Dale turned and eyed her steadily. “You are a little fool,” he said gently. “When a man gives his soul to science nothing must stand in his way! Do you understand that? Nothing must stand in his way!”

  Carol swallowed painfully. “I must go upstairs,” she said shakily. “I—I don’t feel very well just now. Please let me go!”‘

  Dale rounded on her sharply. “You shall go when I am ready to do without an assistant!” he snapped. “Until then you will remain here and watch the screen. That is my wish, you understand?”

  Fighting a desire to turn and run, the girl stayed where she was.

  “Turn the lights out!” he ordered curtly.

  Carol did as she was told without protest. Dale’s will was too strong to resist, but she would have been far happier in her own mind had Bentick been there to give her courage.

  But Bentick was somewhere upstairs with his noxious charge, probably being told off in an ill-mannered fashion for neglecting his duty as a guard. Carol found time to feel sorry for Bentick.

  In the darkness of the laboratory the Telecopter screen suddenly glowed with its bluish light. Dale worked the switches and controls and the screen was obscured by a series of flickering lines and circles. Then they, too, were wiped aside and a recognisable image appeared in their place.

  Carol gasped as she realised that what she was seeing on the screen was the present moment. The illumination was so dim as to be almost non-existent, but she saw herself standing there, just as she was, staring into the screen. She could also see the Professor as he bent towards the Telecopter, partially obscuring her view. Compelled by something stronger than her own will to see all she could, she moved in closer. Her own image on the screen did likewise.

  Dale said: “The Present, you see, child! There is nothing frightening in that now, is there?”

  “No-o,” she muttered, still uncertain of her feelings.

  “Shall we go further then?” Dale did not wait for an answer, but flicked his fingers over the dials and stared at the screen.

  From a white shimmering blankness it changed by slow degrees till once again a figure was revealed.

  “This is the future!” whispered Dale in excited tones. “Do you hear that, Carol? You are looking at the Future!”

  Carol was looking at an image of herself. She appeared to be alone. There was a faint light in the vault, and every detail was recognisable.

  “This is not happening very far ahead of us,” said Dale. “See, you are wearing the same clothes as you are at this moment!” The excitement rose in his voice as Carol on the screen started moving and turning her head. On the pictured face there was fear and trouble. Her hands moved uncertainly.

  Then suddenly she was screaming, hiding her face with her hands.

  Carol of the Present gave a gasp of dismay as she saw what would happen in the Future. Fear rose within her, for the terror on that imaged face of hers was so fearful that it filled her heart with panic.

  “Stop it!” she cried. “Stop it, I tell you! This is something awful!”

  But Dale kept the picture in focus with relentless determination, dividing his attention between the screen and the girl herself, watching for signs and reactions. He himself felt the fear that was in the air. It seemed to emanate from the Telecopter and reach out towards him. Only with difficulty did he fight it down.

  But Carol was breaking. She felt the fullness of terror that sprang from her own image. The scream that would one day be coming from her own lips was there for her eyes to see. She sobbed and tried to bury her face, but the power of the Telecopter to hold its audience was far too strong.

  The Carol on the screen was staring fixedly at something just beyond the range of vision of the machine. She would have given anything to know what that something was. Then another figure obscured the picture, crossing it with its back in view. It was a dark figure, stealthy looking and quite unrecognisable. It went towards Carol’s image, but before it reached her Dale cut the switches suddenly.

  “Turn on the lights!” he snapped. “I don’t want to drive you mad, my child.”

  Shuddering violently, the girl obeyed. She had no strength of her own, or so it seemed. She was little more than a puppet for Dale to play with as he chose.

  “You have seen into the Future,” he repeated. “What is written in the cosmos must come to pass. A moment will come when fear and terror will visit you here in this spot!”

  CHAPTER 6

  NARGAN IS CURIOUS

  Carol’s nerve broke completely as she heard Dale’s words. Without a word she turned on her heel and fled from the vault, running up the steps as if a fiend was close on her tail. It was not the Professor himself she was so terrified of as the things he had shown her; the things that were there in her destiny and would inevitably happen.

  Dale watched her go but made no attempt to stop her. His face was alive with the success of the Telecopter. He had achieved the seemingly impossible and could now foretell the future. Later on, he thought, the range of his latest invention would be increased so that events outside its immediate vicinity would be readily visible. His brain reeled at the vast possibilities thus opened up. In a short while he could make himself master of the world by taking advantage of his own pre-knowledge and turning the written future to his own ends and that of his country. Dale had not yet forsaken the interests of his native land. If he went on along the lines he planned he would eventually do so, but as yet his mind was not so crazed as that.

  Carol, reaching the kitchen and finding it empty, ran straight on and up the stairs to the privacy of her own room. She felt she dare not face anyt
hing or anybody in her present state of mind, and was glad that Bentick was not around to see her.

  As if bolts and bars could keep out terror she locked herself in and flung herself on the bed, hiding from the things that haunted her, yet never losing them completely, Nothing, she felt, could wipe out the fear that sat in her heart when she remembered those relentlessly vivid pictures that Dale had shown her.

  And while Carol lay stiff and rigidly afraid in her room Bentick and Nargan were close at hand in the foreigner’s suite.

  Below in the gloomy laboratory Professor Dale was probing the future with the eyes of the Telecopter. The things he saw there put fresh thoughts in his fevered mind and set him working eagerly to establish further facts.

  Upstairs Nargan was in an odd frame of mind. He gave Bentick a trying time for quite a while after fetching him up from the vault, but as soon as his temper was spent his manner changed abruptly.

  Nargan was curious.

  Bentick sensed the change and distrusted it. He even had an inkling of what would be the outcome, and determined at all cost to stall the foreigner off.

  Nargan opened by remarking on the well-kept secrets of Dale’s laboratory.

  “Behind a steel door and secret passages!” he chuckled. “The steel door was left open when I came to find you. That is no way to guard a secret, my friend!”

  Bentick eyed him suspiciously, guessing that this was the start of a probe into Dale’s activities.

  “It’s none of my business how Dale guards his secrets,” he answered. “I was only down in the lab by chance. The girl took me down.”

  Nargan’s eyes went steely. “So you are not aware of what the professor is working on?” he countered. “I can hardly believe that, you know! It seems strange for a brilliant scientist to let outsiders watch him at work—unless, of course, he is demonstrating something new and original especially for their benefit.”

  He watched Bentick closely as he spoke, seeking for some reaction that would give him a clue to what he wanted to know.

  But Bentick was cagey.

  “Professor Dale was demonstrating nothing,” he answered briefly. “I know nothing of his affairs beyond the fact that in the past he has produced a great deal of valuable work on behalf of my country. He will no doubt continue to do so, but I assume that he keeps his secrets intact from popular curiosity. He is reticent even with the girl, who acts as his assistant, so it is highly unlikely that he would divulge anything important to a stranger.”

  Nargan nodded wisely. “Perhaps we shall see later on,” he murmured. “I am a man who is willing to drive a bargain to a point where refusal would be fatal. If Dale is concerned for the well-being of his country I shall bring him to heel as I have done others in the past.”

  Bentick did not deign to answer. He realised, however, that Nargan’s curiosity would be a dangerous factor with which to contend. He himself did not feel inclined to approach the Professor on the subject, yet he felt that something should be done to put the man on his guard. If he could have a word with Carol she might be able to help him with the problem.

  But Nargan was not co-operative in letting him go for quite a long time. He questioned him closely about all manner of different things. Only by using all his wits did Bentick avoid falling into traps so skilfully laid by the foreigner. By the end of an hour the agent was hating Nargan more intensely than he had ever hated a man in his life before. Under the cloak of a thin veneer of apparent friendship Nargan was trying all he knew to milk Bentick’s brain for information.

  But Bentick came through the ordeal with a feeling that in spite of Nargan he had given nothing of importance away during their trying conversation. All the same he knew he would be very glad when his task was completed and the foreigner gone from England’s shore.

  Midday had come and gone before Bentick finally broke free of Nargan with excuses about finding out what arrangements had been made for lunch. It struck him that this was the queerest visit he had ever paid to a country home. He and Nargan might have been alone in the house for all the interest shown by Professor Dale; and the girl herself was fully occupied with other matters. Bentick wished that she wasn’t, but circumstances were obviously against him. He must make the best of it and that was that.

  While Bentick was nosing round the house in search of Carol, Nargan was doing some furious thinking.

  It seemed to Nargan that unless he took a few risks he might well miss something that would prove to be vital. Although at the time of his hasty visit to the laboratory he had not taken in any details of the various apparatus, he now remembered that the three people down there had been gathered round one particular piece in attitudes of intense interest and concentration.

  Nargan determined to find out what that apparatus was. Nothing, he decided, would prevent him doing that. For all he knew it might be some new weapon invented by Dale for use by Britain against his own country in the event of war. To gain foreknowledge of its potentials would be the greatest stroke in his career, and a stroke which might one day prove invaluable in bringing this country down as he had every intention of doing.

  Bentick, finding no trace of Carol in the kitchen or other open rooms of the house, assumed she was either out or down in the laboratory. To save trouble for everyone concerned he rustled up some food and took it to the dining room, then went to Nargan and told him everything was ready.

  Nargan, from behind a locked door, shouted out to say that he was having a bath and would be down in about an hour’s time. The food, he added, could not be made worse by waiting till he was ready.

  Bentick sighed and gave a rueful grin. Nargan was certainly not the kind to make friends among the people he met.

  He wandered down the stairs and found his way to the library. There was no one there, so he sat and read a paper, trying to still the doubts in his mind and forget Nargan for a time.

  Nargan was not having a bath. That had been nothing but a blind, as were most of the things he did. The moment Bentick had walked away down the corridor Nargan had crept to his own door and listened carefully. Then he, too, was moving towards the stairs and making his way down to the ground floor.

  Bentick, after reading for a few minutes and finding he could not concentrate, sat staring through the window at the rolling waste of moors outside.

  He was still sitting there by the window when Professor Dale came in, white coat stained and crumpled, hair awry. Without a word to Bentick he crossed to the sideboard and poured himself a stiff drink, which he downed at a gulp. Only then did he turn and acknowledge the young man who had risen from his chair and stood watching him a trifle guiltily.

  “So you’ve made yourself comfortable, I see!” grunted the scientist. “I wish people wouldn’t make so free of my house. If I’d known what that Nargan fellow was going to be like I should never have agreed to his coming here for any meeting—even if it is an important one!”

  “I’m sorry about it, sir,” said Bentick quietly. “I know it must be unpleasant for you, but it is for the good of Britain.”

  “I wonder if it is,” mused Dale. His eyes were glinting brightly as he spoke. “It might be of course. I might be able to turn the bad into good. We shall see!”

  Bentick was on the point of saying something else when Dale swung on his heel and left the room again.

  Bentick started to follow him, intending to ask where Carol was, but in the end he decided not to and sat down in the chair again, frowning in a puzzled kind of fashion.

  Professor Dale hurried back through the kitchen. At the steel door to the laboratory, however, he halted abruptly, face suddenly pale with tension. The door stood ajar. Dale knew he had closed it behind him when he came up for a drink. Then his eyes narrowed as he remembered Nargan.

  Sucking in his breath between his teeth with a kind of venomous hiss he slipped quietly through the door and made his way along the stone-flagged passage to the head of the broad gallery steps leading downwards. There he stopped again, looking d
own at the laboratory and smiling very gently to himself.

  What he saw was Nargan down there. And Nargan was bending forward, staring at the Telecopter with an intensity of purpose that quickly told Dale the man was out to probe its secrets.

  Very quietly the scientist advanced down the steps from the gallery till he stood at their foot and watched Nargan. The foreigner had not yet realised he was no longer alone. His hand reached out to the switches of the Telecopter in an effort to bring something to life on the mysterious screen before him, but before he could succeed in doing anything Professor Dale gave a cough and started walking towards him.

  Instantly Nargan whirled, his hand flashing down to one of his pockets where he kept his gun.

  Professor Dale ignored the threat of the gun as he faced the foreigner.

  “So I have another visitor!” he said with a gently disarming smile, “I am always pleased to entertain guests, my friend. Was there anything particular you wished to see?”

  Nargan was somewhat taken aback by this reception. He had expected furious anger on the part of the professor at his intrusion where he was not wanted, but this was something entirely different. At first he did not know quite how to handle the situation, but his quick-acting brain soon grasped the position and gave his tongue the glibness it was used to.

  “Ah, my dear Professor!” he beamed. “Please do forgive me for coming down here uninvited, but I wished to locate that excellent young man who is acting as my bodyguard. He had mentioned having been here and I thought to find him again. An interesting place you have, yes? There are many wonderful things to delight the eyes of a scientist. I wish I had your knowledge and ability to wield what is unknown to other men.”

  Dale gave a thin-lipped smile. He was in no way deceived by Nargan’s silky tones, and was already forming a plan to discomfort the man. If Nargan wished to probe he should have his money’s worth, he thought. Aloud he said:

  “I am only too delighted to oblige you by revealing a few of my secrets. They are, of course, something I must trust you never to pass on to anyone else, but I know you would not fail me. While I understand that you have the interests of your own country at heart, I am also aware that you are a friend of England, and as such would never betray a trust.”