A river curled about the far end of broad acres.
The only inhabitants of the place, outside Dr. Coratti and Beryl, were the Butsons, manservant and housekeeper—a couple of hard-bitten old devils who had passed their golden wedding in service.
It was around ten-thirty when Lucy, who had been uneasy all evening, said she was going to find out what her old man was doing. In five minutes she was back, hurriedly, swinging the lounge door wide. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright with alarm.
“Dad—in the laboratory!” she gasped out. “He’s dead! Dead…”
Beryl and I jumped up. I caught Lucy tightly.
“Wait a minute! Take it easy! He can’t be dead; it isn’t—”
“He is dead!” she shouted hysterically. “Lying there on the floor— Oh, Curt, it’s horrible…”
With my arm still about her we went outside. Beryl went ahead of us. She stood staring at Dr. Coratti’s sprawling form on the laboratory floor when Lucy and I came in.
“Yes,” Beryl said quietly. “He is dead.”
I still could not believe it. I tested the pulse, but there was not the slightest flicker; nor any respiration. I turned the doctor over gently and stared at his ashen face and fixed, staring eyes. His mouth was twisted into a sardonic grin, as though he had contemplated something grimly amusing as his last mortal act.
Thereafter I had my hands full. Lucy was utterly inconsolable, weeping and shuddering by turns. Coratti had understood her sensitive nature better than anyone else, and they had always been close. Beryl was different. The event had shocked her, it was true, but she was calm enough. While I tried to convince Lucy there was nothing we could do about it, Beryl went in and phoned for the doctor.
“Heart failure,” the medico said, when he’d finished his examination. “Not at all uncommon in a man of fifty-eight; happens suddenly. I’d say he had been undergoing tremendous strain of some sort… Well, I guess we all have these things to face. Good night.”
But the conviction of foul play persisted with me. I even went around the laboratory hangar outside to look for footprints, but of course there were none. When I got back to the hangar, Beryl had gone but Lucy was still there, seated on a chair, her tear-misted eyes gazing blankly in front of her.
“Well, did you find anything?” she asked in an absent voice.
“Find anything?” I pretended innocence. “Such as?!
“You went to look for signs of an attack, didn’t you?” she demanded, getting to her feet. “Didn’t you?” She caught my arm tightly.
I admitted it, and looked at her taut face. It was not grief-stricken now but set and hard.
“He was alone all evening,” Lucy went on. “Curt, it’s sheer nonsense to think that he died, just like that! Father was thin and nervous, yes; but he was wiry, used to strain and— Well, maybe he was right, after all. Maybe those criminals he worried about did steal his secret! Maybe they did kill him!”
I put my arm around her. “Take it easy, child. If something’s up, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Heart failure or murder, I wasn’t going to let my wife get hysterical. Particularly when Coratti’s corpse on a table, over which Beryl had temporarily thrown a sheet, stood out like a sore thumb.
So I tried to show concern and poked into this and that, not that it meant much to me, as I’m not much of a scientist. The hangar was stocked with endless jars of chemicals, machinery, electrical equipment, and at the far end there was even a botanical section. Lucy joined me at that point, and we stood looking in puzzled silence at a soil bed full of remarkably strange plants. Funny thing was, they were all dead.
“Queer,” Lucy observed, frowning. “I never knew Dad was interested in plants. Unless—unless he brought them back with him from the moon,” she added quickly. “That may be it.”
I looked at them closely. They looked as plants do when transplanted during hot sunshine. The soil around them was pretty loose.
“Your guess is as good as any,” I sighed. “Unattractive looking plants, too—rather like cactus. Don’t seem to be of much use.”
So that was that.
On the whole we passed a pretty bad night, but at least Lucy was calmer and more composed the following morning. I was prepared to give all the help I could to the funeral when an early phone call put a stop to my intentions. I was needed immediately in the city on legal business.
Ten minutes later I was in my car headed back to town. The law is a remorseless machine, and it kept me tied to a stuffy courtroom for more than three days before I was able to finish the case. I went to our city apartment to get my bag before heading out to the country again, when the telephone rang.
To my surprise Beryl’s voice came over the receiver—but it did not sound like the Beryl I knew. She was hurried, excited.
“Curt? Thank goodness I’ve got you at last. I’ve tried before—”
I interrupted her. “Anything happened? Lucy all right?”
“Yes, yes—she’s all right. Listen, Curt—this is urgent! I’ve just found something among Dad’s effects that explains that great secret he talked about. I don’t like being in the country here with Lucy and having this secret around. We might be attacked—criminals, I mean. Are you coming back or shall we drive in?”
“I’ll be right with you,” I said. “Meanwhile, hold tight.”
* * * *
It was an hour later that evening when I swept into the driveway of the old estate and pulled up with a shriek of brakes. I had only just got out of the car when I distinctly heard a revolver shot—and then another from somewhere in the rear of the old place. In another moment I was running under the trees along the shale path to the expanse of grounds at the rear.
I was just in time to see three heavily muffled figures go racing across the sweep of lawn in the starlight, to vanish in the direction of the hangar.
“Curt! Curt, is that you?”
I twirled around as I realized it was Beryl’s voice, full of anguish, half choking.
Running through the shadowy dark I found her at last, sprawled helplessly on the floor between the open French windows. She was trying to raise herself. I caught her in my arms, lifted her head and shoulders, and she coughed thickly. In the starlight I saw her light-colored dress was darkly stained across her left breast.
“Curt…listen. I haven’t much time.” She plucked at my sleeve with a quivering hand. “They shot me…twice. The secret…”
“What is the secret?” I panted. “Beryl—in God’s name—”
I raised her higher, and blood flecked her lips for a moment.
“The—the weeds…” She sighed; then with a tremor she relaxed and her head fell back.
I knelt there, too stupefied to move. Beryl was dead, shot by those damned—well, shot by whom?
I looked up sharply at a sudden blasting roar through the night; followed with my eyes a cream of sparks climbing into the darkened sky. Dr. Corattí’s rocket ship, obviously driven by the murderers of Beryl!
The killers had gone off into space in the only rocket ship known to Earthmen, and the secret of its motive power—as far as I knew—was locked in the dead brain of Dr. Coratti.
CHAPTER II
The Flying Horrors
It took me several seconds to gather my wits. Then I lifted Beryl’s dead body to the library divan and switched on the lights. There was a scene of infinite disorder. Chairs were overturned, rugs rumpled, papers scattered wholesale. It was obvious Beryl had made a desperate fight for her life.
After a while I got Butson and his wife to come in. The two caretakers seemed too appalled to speak when they saw Beryl’s corpse and the blood on her dress. And when they did, they couldn’t tell me anything.
“That’s a big help,” I snapped. “Well, where is my wife all this time?”
“She went out, Mr. Fowley, for a walk—about two hours ago, it’ll be, by now.”
So, naturally, that made me even more jittery.
Lucy
had not returned by the time the police came. There was the coroner, one or two plainclothes men, and a shrewd-eyed little man who introduced himself as Inspector Davison. His questions brought forth nothing more than I had already learned. The coroner laconically observed that Beryl had died from bullet wounds through chest and stomach. After that he left, bag in hand.
By then I was all set to explode. I can stand just so much complacence, and then I blow up. I would have, in fact, if Lucy hadn’t come in just then through the open French windows.
She stood blinking, obviously dazzled by the light and confused by the presence of the police. I looked at her quickly. She was dressed in her fur coat and little hat, but she had rubber ankle boots on. They were stained to the tops with yellow mud, still moist.
“Curt—” She came over to me quickly. “Curt, what has happened here? What are these—”
She stopped, her hand going in horror to her throat as she caught sight of Beryl’s dead body still on the divan. She collapsed right there in my arms, and we had to spend about ten minutes bringing her round again.
I had to explain everything as gently as I could. She listened, taking it all in, and closed her eyes once or twice in horror.
The inspector got on the job then. “Where did you go, Mrs. Fowley? I’d like to know, if you don’t mind.”
“Why, I went for a walk by the river,” Lucy said. “I felt I wanted to clear up my mind a bit, after the funeral.” She stopped and thrust out her rubber-booted feet. “I suppose you want proof of what I say? Well, there it is. The river towpath is covered with yellow mud like this.”
Inspector Davison nodded slowly, his keen little eyes studying her face. For that matter, I was studying it too. Something had happened to Lucy since I had left her three days before. She seemed now to be laboring under a tremendous strain. Being accustomed to her every mood, I could sense it clearly.
Davison pondered a moment, then he turned away abruptly and signaled one of his men to accompany him. They went out of the room and started an investigation outside again.
“Lucy,” I whispered. “Lucy, dearest, what’s wrong? What’s happened to you since I saw you last? You’re different—so different!”
She looked at me directly then, and though her tongue again gave denials I saw terror—yes, terror—and with it a certain stubbornness in those blue eyes of hers.
“You’re being silly, Curt,” she said it rather sharply, getting to her feet. “What I want to know is what did Beryl find out that she was so anxious to tell you? When I left her she was reading. The minute my back was turned, she must have started snooping again.”
“Snooping? Oh, you mean going through your father’s papers and effects…”
I turned as the inspector came in again.
“Tell me, Mr. Fowley, have you any idea what those weeds are in the laboratory? Was your father a botanist, Mrs. Fowley?”
“We believe they are probably lunar plants,” I answered him quietly. “But what possíble connection could they have with the murder?”
“An investigation has many angles,” Davison said. “I’ll have a botanist here to look these plants over and classify them, if possible. In the meantime you will both stay on hand here. I shall leave men around the house on twenty-four hour duty.”
So again, that was that.
* * * *
Two nights after Beryl’s funeral things began with a vengeance! Lucy and I had gone to bed about midnight, and I must have fallen asleep immediately. But I was awakened suddenly by a strange rushing sound, accompanied by an unearthly wailing as from a dungeon of damned souls.
I stiffened, listening, awakening by degrees to awareness. There was not just a single cry but many of them—remote, unearthly. I sat up quickly and twisted around; then I got my second shock. Lucy had gone! I groped for the light switch, but before I found it I heard the dry leathery beat of giant wings momentarily against the great window of the bedroom.
Forgetting all about lights, I floundered out of bed and tore back the curtains. The night was a wild one, with a moon nearly at her last quarter riding the ragged deeps. It was an incredible sight I saw then. Some five or six things with mighty bat-like wings outspread—and bodies similar to those of an ant—paraded across my vision. Ants with bats’ wings! What the hell was this?
As I watched, they circled against the moon like something out of prehistoric times. They climbed up, flew down to the grounds, circled with their ungodly cries;
I snapped out of my trance and blundered for dressing gown and slippers, shouting Lucy’s name as I did so. There was no response. As I made for the door, I noticed her gown and slippers were absent too.
Then came a different sound—that of smashing glass and a sudden desperate scream, clearly Lucy’s. The noise seemed to come from the library downstairs. I went down the stairs like a madman, missed the bottom step and crashed my length in the hall. Up again in a flash I whipped up a medieval ax from the hall armory and charged into the library.
The light was full on, and I was paralyzed with shock for a second at what I saw. Lucy was fighting desperately with threshing arms and legs against the mighty pincered forelegs of a monstrosity that was now more antlike than ever. It had obviously crashed right through the glass of the French windows to make its attack.
In that second of horror I absorbed the things outlined. The mighty membranous wings, folded now like a cape, enormous eyes, pincered forelegs and powerfully jointed legs behind, leveled its armored body upward. It reared far above my wife, bending her slender body backward with spine-cracking force. Lucy gave a gasping scream and struggled with renewed desperation, screaming huskily.
I whirled my battle-ax then with blind fury, slashed clean through the leg that crushed around Lucy’s back. She sank senseless to the carpet, a watery ichor from the thing drenching her torn gown and nightdress. I struck again, and again, the ax blade flashing in each sweep.
I am pretty powerful and I worked to good effect, insane fury helping me plenty.—I caught the thing in a vital spot at last, struck it a blow in its underparts which sent it flapping in blind agony through the broken window. It rose unsteadily, sank down, then was caught by its hideous companions. They went sailing off into the ragged sky.
Drenched in sweat, I dropped my ax with a clatter and wheeled back into the room. I heard revolver shots as I did so. I was examining Lucy for injuries when two of the plainclothes men supposedly on guard burst in. One of them was named Lewis, I remembered;
“What in hell happened here?” he demanded, staring with wide eyes.
“We nearly got killed, that’s all,” I retorted, heaving Lucy’s collapsed weight into my arms. “Where the hell were you?”
“On the grounds, of course. We saw those things flying around, but we figured somebody would come out of the house to meet them. Then we heard the glass smash. Never reckoned one of the damned things had come in and—”
“All right, all right,” I growled. “Take a look around. That blasted thing half killed my wife.”
“But what were they?” Lewis scratched his head. “Looked like bats or something—Hello, what’s this?” He looked beyond the severed ant leg on the carpet and picked up a book.
I glanced at it. It was Jules Verne’s A Trip to the Moon, oddly enough.
“I dunno,” I grunted, shifting Lucy more securely in my grip. “Tell Butson and his wife to come up to the bedroom, will you? They’re around some place; I heard them as I came down here. Better have your men look around the grounds for some explanation for all this.”
“Yeah. You bet!”
With the help of the Butsons it took me ten minutes to get Lucy to her senses again. She wasn’t injured, thank heaven, beyond a few scratches and heavy bruises which bandages and ointment could take care of. She lay staring at me in vague wonder when she opened her eyes, then a look of appalled horror came to her face as she suddenly remembered.
“You’re all right, dearest,” I murmured thankfully, gr
ipping her cold hands. “They’ve gone—whatever they were—”
“I didn’t even have a chance. I couldn’t sleep, so I went down to get a book—”
“Verne’s Trip to The Moon?” I put in briefly.
“Yes… I dropped it, I suppose. I heard what I thought was the wind rising—then the glass suddenly smashed in, and—”
“Wait!” I interrupted her quickly. “The curtains were not drawn and the light was on? The creatures could have seen you from the outside?”
“Yes, I suppose they could.”
“Hm-m. They must have had a reason for that attack, and I’ll find out what it is if I stay here forever!”
I thought for a moment, an odd idea chasing around my brain. Presently I asked her,
“What possessed you to read Verne’s To the Moon, anyway?”
Lucy shrugged. “Why not? It’s a good yarn—but my main reason was to pass the time in seeing how far Veme had anticipated Dad’s rocket-traveling secret.”
“But—but you don’t know your father’s secret of rocket travel.”
“What gave you that idea? Of course I know it! He told it to me and to Beryl when he discovered it—but he told us to let it go no further. So we did as he asked. Matter of fact, the duplicate plans are in the laboratory safe. Beryl came across them just after Dad was put in the mausoleum.”
That made me flush. “Holding out on me, huh?”
Lucy ignored that. “Why would you say they attacked me?” she asked irritably.
“I don’t know,” I answered slowly. “Those flying things were not of this world; I’m sure of that. Maybe they were Selenites.”
“Selenites!”
“I’m going to find out what I can,” I said briefly. I turned to Butson and his wife. “You two can go now, thanks. You’Il be safe enough while Fm gone, Lucy. I’ll be on the grounds within earshot, and I’ll see if anything unusual happens.”
She nodded and relaxed. I scrambled into a few clothes, a hat and overcoat, then went outside and caught up with the plainclothes men snooping around under the trees.
“Anything?” I asked Lewis.
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 15