The Mad Scientist Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Did you lock it?” he cried. He had apparently recovered from whatever had afflicted him and he looked wilder—if possible—than ever. “Who’s this dame?” he shouted. “Oh, Miss Hopper! Don’t tell me she—But what happened to Boris and—My God, what’s this?”

  “Yellow powder,” I said.

  Myshkin’s eyes bulged. He reached for Harriet and I gave him a hack across the arm. The next moment Gladys ran up with a flurry of excited little cries that added up to the distressing fact that the coat was hers. Siegman was standing at the sink, gulping water and moaning softly as he watched us. I took the glass from him to bring Harriet some water and he followed me with hoarse complaints that it was the only glass. Myshkin was trying to get at Harriet as Gladys settled her in the armchair, and when I came over he began mumbling to himself. Gladys was rubbing a handkerchief on the coat without effecting the powder, telling Harriet not to mind while she herself wept bitterly. Harriet sipped the water, and gave the glass back to me.

  “Do you feel better now?” I asked her.

  “I feel fine,” she said.

  “Because if you’d rather wait a bit—”

  “Who asked you?” Myshkin shouted. “If you want to wait, wait! She says she feels fine!”

  “Look at her!” I said. “Look at her eyes!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” said Harriet. “Some of the powder got into them, that’s all. And the odor got me a little dizzy, I suppose.”

  “Please, Miss Hopper,” Myshkin cried, clasping his hands in entreaty, “please, please please, please tell me what happened when they ran out. Did Boris—”

  “But I didn’t see anyone run out.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t see anyone?” I said.

  “But she was—”

  “I know she was! Shut up! Let her talk!”

  “Henry, you’re absolutely right! Miss Hopper, I apologize. You were standing downstairs, outside. You yanked that goddam bell two or three times. The downstairs door opened. Right so far? Then—what happened?”

  “There was an explosion,” said Harriet.

  “…Explosion! Myshkin repeated softly. He’d been half leaning over the chair in anxiety, but that word straightened him out. “I don’t recall any explosion,” he said, furrowing his brow. “I heard a cry and then…”

  “And then you passed out.” I said. “How do you expect to hear explosions when you’re out cold?”

  “It could have brought me to, couldn’t it? I heard this idiot Siegman yell when I fell on him, didn’t I?”

  “You haven’t heard the last of that, either,” said Siegman.

  “Quiet!” said Myshkin. “Miss Hopper, I’m sorry. Let’s see. There was a cry, then the explosion. Now that cry came from you, did it?”

  “Probably, but the explosion came first. That’s why I cried out. But it didn’t make an explosive noise, I mean. Just whffftt!”

  “Whffftt?” said Myshkin blankly. “What is that?”

  “The sound it made. The door opened and there was a blinding golden flash of light very close to me. When I could see again, the air was filled with yellow powder. It was as if opening the door had set it off.”

  “Aaahhhhh,” Myshkin breathed. “A gold flash. That was all? You didn’t see anyone? You know about Boris? No Boris? You didn’t see a vicious-looking individual with him?”

  “Or without him,” said Harriet.

  “Just a gold flash. I see…”

  “Now listen to me. Myshkin,” I said. “I can hear what’s spinning in your head. You take that gold flash and stuff it. I’m not interested in any theories about invisibility. All I—”

  “Impossible? You think it’s impossible?”

  “Myshkin, what the hell is the matter with you? Aren’t there sensible explanations for simple things anymore? Boris flung a bag of yellow powder at her. She wasn’t looking down far enough to see him when the door opened, and the powder blinded her so that she couldn’t see this other guy. And why are you worrying about such nonsense when you can’t begin to explain how Boris ever got together with a human being—”

  “You call that a human being?”

  “I call it a concrete fact. Where did Boris get that gunman? Why was he obviously working for Boris? How did that happen? What does it mean?”

  “May I interrupt?” said Harriet. “No one flung a bag of yellow powder at me.”

  “All right, no one did,” I said. “Myshkin—”

  “I might possibly have missed a little thing like Boris,” said Harriet, “but no one else ran past me. I was directly in front of the door. They’d have had to push me aside. And it was an explosion—a bright golden noiseless explosion like a flash-bulb.”

  “All right, it was a golden flash-bulb,” I said. “Myshkin—” That time I interrupted myself. “Wait a minute!” I said “Myshkin, did you see a tiny silver something in Boris’s hand? He took it out of his pocket just before he ran!”

  “Hmmmmm?” said Myshkin distantly. “Yeah… yeah.”

  “Why couldn’t that be some kind of a flash-bulb?”

  “Yeah?” said Myshkin.

  “Yeah! I’ve heard about something of the sort—an electronic tube or something. He had it ready just for that kind of a getaway if he needed it!”

  Myshkin nodded absently. “Maybe he invented it.” he said.

  “And you own all rights to it, naturally?” said Siegman.

  “…Myshkin, what’s wrong?” I said.

  “Well, how did the big guy get past Miss Hopper?”

  “He just got past her! Maybe she wasn’t standing as squarely in front of the door as she thought. Maybe he did push her and she didn’t know it. She was in a daze when I got to her—you saw how she was when she first came up here?”

  “No one got past me.” said Harriet. “Mr. Myshkin, I’m sure!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Myshkin sighed. He was running thoughtful fingers over the yellow powder that clung to the outside of both paper bags. “It probably doesn’t matter…”

  “You’re lying,” I said. “You think it does matter.”

  “What you think I think doesn’t matter either.”

  “You’re not telling all you—”

  “Hey, there’s food in here!” Myshkin cried as he ripped open first one bag then the other. “Food! That’s what matters!” He began to stack the food on the table, and in a moment he was surrounded by half a smoked turkey, some cold roast chicken, bread and rolls, a chunk of Swiss cheese, olives, tomatoes, butter, coffee, canned peaches and two quart containers of milk. He fell on the stuff without an off-rhythm bite. “Eat! Eat!” he gulped. “S’matter? N’hungry?”

  I said, very slowly: “Listen, Myshkin—”

  He held up a hand, swallowed hard, and a real smile blossomed. “The discussion continues as soon as you’ve shown me that note you got from Boris.” He started cutting the cheese. “But let’s eat too, huh?” he said, and the innocence he tried to get into his eyes was so phony that it was hard to imagine anything more wicked and cunning.

  I gave him Boris’ note, the handkerchief and the jewels in it. He unfolded the blue-print and stopped chewing. But when he untied the handkerchief and saw what was in it, I had the satisfaction of watching him almost choke to death.

  * * * *

  It was after we’d told Myshkin about Boris’ activities that afternoon that I decided his private ideas on what was going on probably weren’t worth much. There were too many surprises for him, and too complete a dejection. One thing about Myshkin—he was so much of a natural enthusiast that he couldn’t fake misery for more than a brief spell.

  The blue-print and the jewels hit him hard, but with the business of Boris crowing at Gladys, shock seemed to set in. He hardly seemed to be listening to me, but he made me tell it twice. Then, after long moments of
apparently, bewildered reflection he asked a lot of questions that got him nowhere except into a brief argument with Gladys. She insisted Boris had been singing to her. Myshkin sipped the coffee I’d brewed and listened, but when she stopped talking he returned to silent contemplation of the blue-print.

  I went to the table and made myself a sandwich. Siegman was sitting there thoughtfully chewing on the last of the peaches. Gladys and Harriet were sharing the armchair, having cheese and coffee. Siegman saw me looking at his watch and held his arm up for me. I was astonished to see it said 8:05. Less than an hour had gone by since I had last looked at that watch…

  “Goodbye, Henry.” said Siegman. “I’m leaving. Shall I write?”

  “Write yourself a prescription for poison,” I said.

  “Wait for us,” said Harriet.

  “How jolly,” I said. “You can split the cab three ways.”

  “I can also split your head three ways,” said Harriet.

  “I’m just trying to be frank about—”

  “You’re more Gaul than Frank,” she said. I know how she meant those words to be spelled. “I don’t pretend to understand anything of this horrible, horrible mess we’ve become involved in, except its danger. Right now the only thing I like about that danger is the thought that I’ll be leaving you in it.”

  “I’m glad I found you out before I married you,” I said.

  “On my list you were classified under leprosy,” she said.

  “Sit down, Miss Hopper, please,” said Myshkin quietly.

  “I walk much better standing. I’m sorry to—”

  “Would you like me to get that powder off your coat?”

  “Oh, Mr. Myshkin, will you?”

  “On my word,” said Myshkin, getting up. “It won’t take long.”

  Siegman and I accidentally exchanged glances and I shrugged. We watched Myshkin go to the work tables and start fussing with chemicals. Gladys helped Harriet off with the coat and they went to Myshkin. He gave them a faint smile and murmured something about the test-tubes near him. The girls quickly took the tubes to the sink and washed them. When they returned they stood on either side of Myshkin, like nurses servicing a surgeon, handing him whatever he indicated with sharp movements of his head. Presently the clear liquid in the largest tube turned smoky, then as it bubbled it began to change to a brilliant green.

  I went over behind Myshkin and watched.

  “Henry, I want you to know I appreciate what it means for you to stay,” he said without turning toward me.

  “I’m not staying,” I said. “I’m only waiting long enough to get you dressed and then we’re going downtown to police headquarters. It’s just that I wouldn’t leave you alone now.”

  “Afraid for me?” His tone was more polite than derisive.

  “Yes.”

  Myshkin sighed. “You’re sweet. Isn’t he sweet, Miss Hopper?”

  “Yes, he is,” said Harriet quietly. “I misunderstood him.”

  “If you misunderstand me, why don’t you marry me?” I said.

  “It’s cooling off,” said Myshkin. “I mean this,” he added and held up the tube. The liquid was altogether green by then and the bubbling had stopped. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

  “Meanwhile you can get dressed,” I said.

  “No, it’s got to be watched,” Myshkin said. He studied the tube, and set it down in a rack. Then he flapped his robe as if to give himself air. “If I’d had some of this handy when Boris was here, it might have been a different story.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “How so?”

  “The color, for one thing. You’ve noticed about green?”

  “Like the cover on the machine and the cable wrappings?”

  “Or these crates up here. I used to find eggs in them all the time until I painted them green.”

  “Well, what about it? What’s the significance?”

  “Who knows? Maybe nothing.”

  “Listen, Myshkin—”

  “Please, Henry! It’s not as if it was my formula.”

  “It’s not your formula?”

  “No. Now, do you want to hear me out or not? All right, then. I found it written on Miss Hopper’s walls one day. In the darkroom, of course. Well, I compounded it, studied it, heated it, froze it, shook it—nothing. Finally I tried drinking it. One sip and I thought I was finished. Just like that diabolical Boris, I thought—a last flash, you know?—because he knew I’d be scientist enough to try it on myself. I was wrong, but in my panic I’d accidentally smashed the tube and some of the stuff got on me. After I noticed I wasn’t dead I also noticed the yellow powder on my pants had disappeared wherever the stuff touched it. The hell of it was that everything I’d tried until then had failed. Well, the first cover I had for the machine was white cotton duck, and it was pretty heavily splattered with the powder, so I used the stuff on it. It was excellent but it gradually turned the cover green. Then I observed that the greener it became the less trouble I had with those insane chicken-men. So I went out and got the highest shade of green I could find for a new cover. Magic. Absolutely kept them off. I soaked the silk in the solution to keep it clean, and I started putting green around, on things like the cables and so on. Even that sweater I bought, the one on the floor there, is green. But that’s all I know. If they have a reason for reacting like that to green, I don’t know what it is. It’s just something I’ve learned that’s useful.”

  The way we had listened to Myshkin you’d have thought he was telling us where he’d buried a treasure.

  I said, “The darkroom walls were green too.”

  “Exactly! I’m glad you asked that question!”

  “I haven’t asked it yet.”

  “The logic of it, my dear Henry! Excellent, really! But it was a process that—” He broke off to glance at Siegman, who had drifted to the work table and was idly looking it over, then turning back to me. He repeated: “A process. The walls were originally green, you remember. It meant nothing to me at first; I just wanted the two walls left unpainted until I’d copied my notes off. Meanwhile I discovered new notes were being added, and I certainly didn’t want to do anything that might put an end to it. Well, the rebellion broke out openly not long after that, and except for Boris—who wasn’t much help, for reasons I didn’t appreciate at the time—those walls were my only way of keeping up with them. But then, as checked their work I’d find all sorts of odd little errors in their calculations, mistakes that were too elementary and too obvious, say, to have been meant to mislead me even if they were aware that I was right behind them—”

  “As they were.” I said.

  “Of course Boris told them that—”

  “And they didn’t try to mislead you?”

  “Yes, they did, but in a larger way. They’d put down things that I’ve since found out had nothing to do with what they were after, but their errors were something else. For instance, a column of figures that definitely meant something would be added wrong.”

  “But if they knew you were finding their notes, they certainly realized you were also finding meaningful things in them. Why should they bother to mislead you, when all they had to do was stop writing on the walls?”

  “Ah, but you see, my notes were on the walls.”

  “So what? They could have copied your notes and—”

  “Exactly—except that as it turned out, they couldn’t copy anything from those walls with any guarantee of accuracy! When they entered that darkroom and went at my notes, something happened to them. The same affect that was responsible for their meaningless mistakes in calculation, in memory, in judgment, produced similar mistakes in their copying! It took several experiences to convince them of this strange phenomenon—naturally, when they later tried working with their copied material, it became obvious—but what could they do? They tried writing on paper directly under
their hands, so that what they wrote wouldn’t appear on the walls. But if they used larger paper, too much was hidden—and if they had to move it they frequently lost their place entirely! You’ve seen those walls, how closely packed the writing is, how densely interwoven… No, unless they worked as closely as possible to my notes, there was no hope at all for them. And that meant they had to work right on the walls!”

  He looked at me with such earnestness that I hesitated.

  “Go ahead, say it,” he said. “What?”

  “Just this,” I said. “You know all this now, but for all you knew then, they were copying your notes and working on them elsewhere. Wasn’t it possible that the whole thing—including those odd little errors—had been carefully planned to mislead you?”

  “All right, suppose it was?”

  “If it was planned to mislead you, how could you recognize which errors were meaningful and which weren’t?”

  “To a large extent I couldn’t,” Myshkin nodded.

  “But you can now?”

  “In some few instances, yes.”

  “Then you don’t know what they’re doing, do you?”

  “…Ahhhhh,” said Myshkin, letting his breath out. “Is that what you were after? You went through all this just to try to find out if I knew what they were doing?”

  “Or if there was any reason to think you might know,” I said.

  “And you couldn’t ask me that directly?”

  “Ask you?” I tried to smile. “If there was time to let you talk long enough, maybe your contradictions would add up to something.”

  Myshkin shook his head sadly. “Henry, I absolutely—”

  “Not two minutes ago you said you had considered their errors too elementary and obvious to have been meant to mislead you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And half a minute ago you agreed that—errors and all—it could have been planned to mislead you. Don’t tell me you overlooked that possibility at the time?”

  “No, I did see it even at the time.”

  “And yet, with no apparent way of checking, you came to decisions that some errors were meaningless and others weren’t? How? I’ll tell you how. There’s something left out, and that something is the real explanation for your decisions. Whatever it is, I’m satisfied that you have no intention of telling us.”