Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb

by D. R. Martin

  “Blast it, let the kid through,” Mr. Cargill ordered. “We’ve got business to conduct.”

  Out of nowhere, Maude Beale appeared and took Johnny by the arm, shooing the crowd out of their way. “I haven’t seen Mr. Cargill this excited since the Vivaldi quintuplets story,” the managing editor whispered in Johnny’s ear.

  Johnny turned back around and gestured to Mel, Uncle Louie, and Nina to follow him.

  They all trooped across the newsroom—its dozens of typewriters now clacking away—and Johnny introduced the others to Mr. Cargill and Miss Beale. The chief ushered them into his office, which looked out on the skyline of Zenith. The four visitors plopped down on the sofa.

  “Hamburgers, fries, and sodas are on the way,” Mr. Cargill said, sitting down facing them. “Thought you might be hungry after your little powwow with Agent Crider.”

  The chief turned to Miss Beale, who perched on the corner of his desk. “Have you briefed Johnny and his sister yet?” His cigar was still rolling back and forth.

  “Not in any detail, Chief,” Miss Beale said. She briefly readjusted her loden green felt cap, with its gorgeous pheasant feather angled jauntily to the rear.

  Mr. Cargill took the cigar out of his mouth and held it like a pencil. “I admit I was dubious about you at first, Johnny,” the gruff editor said. “A twelve-year-old kid shooting news? But you’ve produced the goods. Never seen a young shaver take to the business so quickly. And that trick of yours, riding the ghost horse. Splendid! Swell picture, too—those goofball sewermen playing their cards and drinking their beers on the city’s dime.”

  Johnny shrugged modestly. “Just doing my job, Chief.”

  “Now, Melanie, Johnny,” the editor continued, suddenly looking very serious. “You kids don’t have to give the Clarion an exclusive for the Night Goose story. You could walk down the street to the Herald-Tribune or the Journal and get a couple of nice, fat checks. But what happened last night is the biggest news out of Zenith since the Vivaldi quintuplets were born here last year.”

  Miss Beale winked at Johnny: see, toldja. Johnny grinned back.

  “And I want your story in the Clarion,” Mr. Cargill said. “We’ll give you both contracts and a nice hunk of cash.”

  Johnny was excited, almost vibrating. This could be a huge break, a dream come true. A contract meant he was halfway to getting on the Clarion payroll as a staff photographer. And there was hardly anything he wanted more.

  “I think we should do it, Mel,” he said. “I think something big’s going on, and it’s real important that people find out what happened. Nobody could tell this story better than you and me.”

  Johnny knew Mel had hoped that when the Gesellschaft hit the front pages, it would be with some huge discovery that would benefit mankind. She had told him—as the Night Goose limped back to Zenith—that she didn’t approve of the idea of writing about ghosts as thugs and assassins. It would only reinforce the bad feelings that many of the living had toward specters. And Johnny understood that prejudice against ghosts was way too common. Was it their fault they died and got stuck in the ether?

  So he was surprised and cheered by Mel’s response.

  “I think Johnny’s right when he says something big is going on,” the exhausted etherist agreed. “This’ll give us a chance to explain why the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft matters. And why we have to get to the bottom of this terrible plot.”

  She looked from Johnny to Uncle Louie to Mr. Cargill and gritted her teeth.

  “Let’s do it,” she said. “Do you have a typewriter I can use?”

  Chapter 12

  Late that evening Mrs. Lundgren greeted her two “babies” on the front porch with hugs and kisses and blubberings. She said she’d listened to radio news reports and had been dreadfully worried. “But you’re safe now,” said the ghost housekeeper, as they all trooped inside.

  Within a matter of minutes she had whipped up some chicken sandwiches and plopped the plates down on the kitchen table. Uncle Louie filled everyone’s glasses with root beer, then nodded to Nina. “Old Bean, you do the honors.”

  Nina hoisted up her glass. “A toast to the illustrious Miss Melanie Graphic, for valor and bravery in the face of extraordinary danger.”

  “To my big sister,” Johnny added with a grin.

  They clinked their glasses all around and took hearty slurps.

  Johnny heard a mild “harumph” from the far corner of the kitchen. He and Mel turned their heads simultaneously. Colonel MacFarlane stood next to the pantry door, snapping to attention and saluting. “To the commander, huzzah!” he barked in that odd, papery voice of his. “The bravest woman I’ve ever known, alive or dead!”

  Mel forced a weak smile. “Well, it didn’t seem brave at the time. Stupid, more like.”

  Everyone tut-tutted her and said that no, brave she had been and they would take no guff on that point.

  After the sandwiches and potato chips had been thoroughly demolished, Mel yawned a prodigious yawn. “Johnny and I have been mostly awake for forty hours. I just want to climb into bed and sleep for a year or two. But first, I have a question for my kid brother.”

  Johnny sat up straighter. He had a bad feeling about this.

  “Why,” Mel asked, narrowing her eyes, “did you put that mustache on me?”

  Mel was scowling at him and so were Uncle Louie and Nina. Even the colonel and Mrs. Lundgren didn’t look too happy with him.

  Feeling his cheeks redden, Johnny knew he had no one to blame but himself. “You were out like a light. And it was soooooo tempting. And…” He trailed off. “You’re not still mad, are you?”

  “Normally, a stunt like this means you’re washing dishes every night for a month,” Mel said, still looking grim.

  Uncle Louie nodded gravely and took a long sip of his root beer.

  Johnny was genuinely appalled.

  “And no radio,” Mel continued.

  “No radio?” A shock wave went through Johnny’s body. How could a guy live without his radio? No Duke Donegan Show? No Gang Buster Adventures? No football games?

  Mel crossed her arms sternly. “But right now what you’re going to get is—”

  Johnny cringed.

  Mel jumped out of her chair, pulled her brother to his feet, and gave him a bear hug. Then she planted a big, embarrassing kiss on his forehead.

  Johnny squirmed out of his sister’s grasp. She’s gone totally crackers! Rubber room material!

  Suddenly, everyone was laughing.

  “Okay, Mr. Graphic,” Mel teased. “Let’s go over what happened when the Steppe Warrior was getting ready to slice and dice me.”

  Johnny thought back to those very memorable moments on the Night Goose. “Okay, you were at the front of the cabin and shouted at the ghost. The Steppe Warrior turned and walked toward you. He had his sword out. But instead of moving in for the kill, he stopped and laughed. If he hadn’t stopped—”

  “And why did he stop and laugh?” asked Mel.

  Johnny thought about it, then a big grin burst out. “He was surprised by the mustache. On a girl!”

  “Exactly!” trumpeted Nina. “And if he hadn’t been surprised, he wouldn’t have stopped. And if he hadn’t stopped, the colonel would’ve arrived too late.”

  “And the commander might have been killed,” added the colonel.

  “And you would have ended up an only child,” said Uncle Louie.

  “Your stupid two-dollar mustache saved my life,” Mel said. “In all the excitement I never even felt it on my lip. I was wondering why people kept looking at me so oddly. So, my turn now.” She grabbed her root beer off the table and hefted it high. “To John Joshua Graphic and his exclusive one-year contract with the Zenith Clarion.”

  “To Johnny,” Uncle Louie said, “and a lifetime of great photographs.”

  “To the eagle-eyed lensman,” Nina chirped, beaming with pride in her best friend.

  After the kitchen quieted down, Mel smiled at everyone. “Bed for
me, I think. G’night.”

  “Remember,” Johnny said. “Lunch tomorrow with Mr. Cargill.”

  Offering a nod and a wobbly wave, the pony-tailed etherist vanished down the hallway.

  “You know, Uncle Louie, it’s just not fair that we’ve been roped into this bloody business.” Johnny stared into his root beer, now going flat, along with his mood. “I mean, what’d Mel do to deserve almost getting slaughtered by a ghost?”

  “Well, John,” answered Uncle Louie, “sometimes life just grabs you by the scruff of the neck and gives you a good, hard shaking. Nothing you can do except try to hold on and make it through. Like when your mom and dad disappeared. You can’t even imagine how you’ll survive something so awful. But you do.”

  Johnny’s eyelids suddenly felt incredibly heavy. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this tired. He yawned and put his head down next to the empty root beer glass. He was asleep before his forehead clunked against the varnished oak.

  Chapter 13

  Wednesday, October 9, 1935

  Zenith

  When Johnny woke up, dazzling sunlight was pouring through the window, making his entire bedroom glow. He sat up, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and squinted at the alarm clock on the bed stand. Holy maroley, he thought, ten o’clock already. And how’d he get here? In his pajamas, no less?

  Thirteen minutes later Johnny came trotting down the main staircase—face scrubbed, hair combed, teeth brushed. He had on a brown tweed herringbone suit. He strode into the kitchen and found his sister at one end of the table and Uncle Louie at the other.

  “We thought you’d be up earlier, lazybones,” said Mel. “Figured you’d want to see this as soon as possible.” She held up the front page of the Zenith Clarion.

  Johnny’s eyes practically popped out. He snatched the newspaper out of his sister’s hands, sat down, and examined the front page in detail. It looked amazingly impressive.

  In heavy black type the headlines shouted:

  Below the headlines came three stark black-and-white images. One showed Captain Merrick sweating at the Johnson Goose’s controls. The next depicted Mel at the end of her ordeal, a look of utter shock on her mustachioed face. And the last was a photo of one of the damaged engines that Johnny had shot on the aeroboat dock.

  Mel’s story wasn’t that long, only about seven hundred words, with a few hundred more from the colonel in a shaded box. The old ghost soldier gave a ripping account of the battle in the clouds and his confrontation with the eyeless Steppe Warrior. At the bottom of the page Miss Beale’s report recounted what the National Police Bureau was doing about the Steppe Warrior attack and the apparent worldwide conspiracy to murder members of the Oskar Hausenhofer Gesellschaft.

  “Miss Beale called a couple hours ago,” said Uncle Louie, sipping on his coffee. “The entire sunrise edition sold out by 7 a.m. They’re printing additional copies of the regular morning edition and doing an extra edition for this afternoon.”

  “The story’s been picked up by dozens of newspapers and radio stations around the world,” Mel added.

  Though Johnny was terrifically excited, Mel didn’t look like she was enjoying the attention of millions of newspaper readers. Which, he thought, made perfect sense. Let’s see. Friends get murdered. You almost get slaughtered, as well. Your mug is on front pages everywhere wearing a fake mustache. She was sure a good sport to let them print that shot.

  “Here, this just arrived,” Mel said, handing Johnny a small yellow envelope. “From Dame Honoria.”

  He pulled out the telegraph—its printed message taped on the yellow paper—and read the shocking news.

  JUST SAW STORY OF YOUR CLOSE CALL. ARE YOU SAFE MY DARLINGS. ARRIVED IN NEUPORT AND ATTACKED BY GANGSTER GHOST WITH MACHINE GUN. BARELY ESCAPED. I AM ALL RIGHT. NOW BACK TO GILBEYSHIRE AND ON TO GORTON ISLAND. TELEGRAPH YOUR NEWS BOTH ADDRESSES. LOVE HONORIA.

  Johnny already understood they were involved in a very serious business. But all of a sudden, the gravity of the situation sunk in with deadly earnestness. Somebody really meant to kill all these etherists, including Dame Honoria and his sister. And he had to do everything he possibly could to stop it.

  * * *

  At Tony Weller’s Café on Superior Avenue, Johnny, Mel, and Uncle Louie were escorted up the staircase by Tony himself, and ushered into a small private dining room. Carlton Cargill, Maude Beale, and a woman from Zephyr Lines had already arrived for the lunch date they’d scheduled the day before.

  When Johnny, his sister, and his uncle came down the staircase an hour and a half later, Johnny was still in a daze.

  “So does this mean,” he said when they emerged out onto the bustling downtown sidewalk, “that we’re really flying around the world?”

  Uncle Louie reached inside his jacket and pulled out three folded documents. “Once we sign our contracts here, that’s exactly what it means.”

  Mel kept a stone face as they strolled by Freeman’s Book Store, windows chockablock with all the latest best-selling mysteries and romances. Johnny, though, couldn’t help but feel energized.

  He could hardly believe it. They were going to investigate as many of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft murders as they could, and send back their stories and photos. Silver City, Orchid Isles, Tor Chan, Old Continent—here we come!

  The Clarion was hiring Mel and Uncle Louie, as well as Johnny. Zephyr Lines would provide a long-range Como Eagle aeroboat for two months. Danny Kailolu—co-pilot of the Night Goose—would captain it. An experienced flying boat aviator himself, Uncle Louie would be the co-pilot. While Johnny took pictures, Mel would write exclusive dispatches. Colonel MacFarlane and his troopers would come. Best of all, Nina got the assignment of running the seaplane’s long-range radio. She was going to positively pop a cork when she found out she was getting out of school for two months to fly around the world. And Johnny would have someone interesting to talk to on the trip.

  Of course, Johnny understood perfectly well that Mr. Cargill was funding the trip so he could sell more newspapers. Johnny was only too happy to boost the Clarion’s circulation. And along the way, he and Mel might just get at the root of these deadly attacks—and even help end them.

  On the walk back to their car, the trio kept hearing Clarion newsies hawking the paper on the street.

  “Aeroboat tragedy aaaa-voided! Attack of deaaaaadly specters!”

  “Clarion exclusive! Midnight horror in the clouds!”

  “Local girl saves the day! Exclusive photos by Johnny Graphic!”

  No one seemed to recognize Mel—until she was about to climb into the big Morton Monarch touring car.

  Suddenly, a towheaded tyke in short pants and fuzzy brown sweater ran up to her, eyes wide, finger pointing. The little shaver twirled a nonexistent “mustache” on his own upper lip. He giggled wildly and ran off down the street.

  Mel frowned at her brother and uncle. “I was afraid that might happen. Maybe instead of becoming more famous, we should just all go hide. The ghost assassins would never find us.”

  “Listen, Mel,” said Johnny, “we could get killed no matter where we hide. They could find us anywhere we go. I say the best defense is a good offense.”

  “No one would attack us at home,” Mel said, as she climbed into the backseat. She sounded more hopeful than realistic. “It’s the one place in the world where I feel perfectly safe.”

  Chapter 14

  Sunday, October 13, 1935

  Zenith

  The next few days teemed with activity. Meetings were held. Itineraries were planned. Financial arrangements were made. Potential stories were discussed. The world travellers went shopping for the supplies and equipment they would need. When Sunday evening rolled around, an exhausted Johnny flopped onto his bed and fell asleep almost instantly—still wearing his tan corduroy slacks and blue cotton shirt.

  Sometime well after midnight an annoying metallic clangor woke him up. At first he wondered if the noise came from a remnant of a dream. But when he realized
it was emanating from the bedroom next to his, he jumped to his feet in the dark.

  Bolting out into the hallway, he threw open Mel’s door and froze at the sight. Mel was battling for her life with a Steppe Warrior!

  Again.

  Something boiled up inside Johnny, out of control. Pure, red-hot anger! He wanted to tear this blasted ghost from limb to limb. But if he tried to enter the room to help, he might end up distracting Mel. So he did the only other thing he could think of. He turned and screamed. “Help! Colonel! Uncle Louie! Mel’s fighting a Steppe Warrior!”

  Just after Johnny shouted, the ghost launched a series of slashing strikes with a curved sword. And it was clear that Mel had all she could handle, deflecting them with her own army saber. Just parry…parry…parry. She backed toward the door that Johnny had flung open. He felt on the verge of panic, watching Mel’s weakening defensive moves.

  What could he do? What could he do?

  For a start, he ran toward the top of the staircase and switched on the hallway lights so his sister could see clearly. He knew that the light would help Mel even the odds.

  The two sword fighters erupted into the hallway, raining sword strikes on each other.

  Just then Uncle Louie—half asleep, barefoot, and in his bathrobe—stumbled into the hallway and almost into the middle of the fight, narrowly avoiding Mel’s whirling infantry saber. “Jumpin’ Jiminy!” he exclaimed, and nipped back into his bedroom.

  “Mel’s fighting a Steppe Warrior,” Johnny shouted from the top of the staircase. “I’m going to try to help her. You yell for the colonel.”

  “You got it, John,” Uncle Louie hollered back. “Colonel MacFarlane! Colonel MacFarlane!” he bellowed repeatedly.

  One of the globe lights on the ceiling shattered into hundreds of shards when the Steppe Warrior’s sword hit it. The wraith was backing Mel down toward where Johnny stood. Mel could stay upstairs and get trapped by the ghost at the far end of the hallway. Or she could tread backward down the broad staircase, just as the movie star Trevor Sheridan did in his famous duels up on the silver screen. Or she could gamble it all and launch a fierce attack.