The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack

by John Russell Fearn

  “How did it happen, Mrs. Fowley, that you were at the laboratory at the very moment those men landed back here?” the inspector snapped.

  “Coincidence,” Lucy said quietly. “I didn’t plan it to happen that way, if that’s what you think. I’d blown up the lab when I found they were outside. They asked me what I’d done, so I told them I’d done it with mercury fulminate. They said I’d done it to stop them examining the laboratory. Then they pushed a gun in my back and made me keep quiet.”

  “Why did you blow up the laboratory?” Davison asked. “Answer me that.”

  “I—I did it to save my husband from getting into danger. I know from what my father told me how space travel can drive a man to madness—and Curt was so dead set on flying to the moon, I considered it my duty to stop him by force. He wouldn’t listen to reason, you see.”

  “These men tried to torture you into revealing a secret,” the inspector went on. “What was it? Or do you mean you do not know?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy answered wearily. “I know of it, but nothing about it. All I know the newspapers told me—about seeing through walls. These men thought they were getting the secret from Beryl, but all they got was weeds. So they returned and tried to get it out of me.”

  “And the flying horrors are from the moon,” Davison mused. “We can see now, from what you say, Fowley, that they are trying to destroy everybody who has stolen stuff from the moon. They destroyed these criminals because they had brought back weeds from the moon. It is possible they destroyed Dr. Coratti, too. Beryl Coratti died by a bullet, and they tried to get you, Mrs. Fowley, because you are a daughter of Dr. Coratti’s.”

  Lucy nodded tiredly. “Guess that’s right.”

  “Okay!” Davison perked up a bit. “You get yourself well again, Mrs. Fowley, and leave the rest to us. I’ll see my men keep you safe. I’ve doubled the guard now.”

  He motioned to me as Lucy closed her eyes and relaxed. I followed him down to the library. Daylight was peeping through the clouds.

  “Fowley,” he said, “do you think—man to man—your wife is telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered him slowly. “I believe that she blew up the laboratory because she knew that if I went out into space, I would find out a secret which she is trying desperately to conceal. I don’t know what it is, but we’ll find it. Right now, I’ve one or two ideas to put forward.”

  “Good! We could do with some original suggestions.”

  “Consider this one, then. We were attacked on the grounds by somebody who used a paralyzing gun. In this later attack tonight, paralyzing guns were again used, but by men who had just come back from space! Doesn’t that prove that they alone are not the brains behind this whole set-up?

  “It is the one with the first gun, who has been on Earth all the time that we’ve got to locate. He—or she, for it might be either—is probably the master mind.”

  Davison said, “I see your point. And from the style of the gun, it is obviously somebody scientific. But how do we start? Those men who tried to torture your wife are out of the picture—dead, mangled to mincemeat. I looked in the boathouse with my men on the way up here… Ghastly sight!

  “The only one who still had recognizable features was Joe Calvis, I’d say, a one-time racketeer who escaped prison and was never caught. Well, I don’t see how it all adds up.”

  “Some things add up,” I said grimly. “We know that the theft of commercial secrets is somehow connected with this business—and we know Dr. Coratti had a method for getting secrets which he discovered on the moon.

  “It is possible that the man who brought about Coratti’s death—or the woman—obtained that secret, and so forestalled the other crooks, Joe Calvis and friends. They, tapping phone wires, thought Beryl had the secret. Maybe she had; but either way, she knew about the weeds as well, and Calvis took that to be the secret.

  “Therefore, it is this unknown that attacked us on the first night who caused the death of Coratti. That is the person we want!”

  “And you think your wife may know who this person is?” the inspector asked shrewdly.

  “It’s possible,” I admitted. Then I went on seriously, “We are dealing with a clever scientist—so we’ve got to be a bit cleverer. Did it ever occur to you, Inspector, that these Selenite things resemble ants?”

  “Yeah—so they do.” He looked surprised. “So what? Don’t we know from astronomical data that a Selenite just couldn’t exist on the moon’s harsh, airless surface? Therefore they must come from inside the moon, where there might be air. And they would likely as not look like an ant, since the moon’s interior is pretty much like an anthill on a large scale?”

  “Exactly—and therefore, any secret of theirs would like as not be antlike in principle! I heard a reference to ants at the boathouse when those devils had my wife, and from it I gathered enough to think that ants are in this somewhere—earthly ants. Remember, the person who attacked me and your boys that first night was burrowing for something. Could it have been—ants?”

  “Well, from what Lewis told me, the guy certainly wasn’t planting radishes,” Davison mused. “Guess we can settle it best by looking at the spot again. Though I don’t see the connection, even now.”

  “We may later,” I said. “We know precious little about the real capabilities of an ant. Corattí may have found something out about them. Won’t hurt to investigate.”

  Out he went into the fast-waxing daylight to check over the spot. It had been examined before, of course, but with no particular result, since nothing special except footprints had been looked for—and those had been rubbed out. But now, as we prodded around with sticks, we unearthed a veritable anthill. Thousands of the busy little beggars were racing about in all directions on their interminable errands.

  The inspector glanced at me grimly. “Guess your hunch was right, Fowley! Do you stop there, or are there more ideas?”

  “You bet there are! We’ve got to drag our unknown enemy into the open, since we can’t find out where he is. Ants are highly intelligent, as we know: in their limited sphere they possess the gift of reason, which is supposed to be the prerogative of homo sapiens.”

  “Skip the lecture hall and get to cases. They’re intelligent. “Ríght! So what?”

  “Suppose,” I said slowly, “they learn the secrets from inside four walls, and hand them on to the criminal?”

  He choked. “Huh? Ridiculous, man! Keep your feet on the ground, for God’s sake!”

  “I am, though I admit I put that rather badly. Well, I don’t know how these ants do it, but I’m becoming damned sure that they do! And we can find out, too!”

  “Well?” He was looking keen again.

  “Can you arrange it so that the news of a very big secret meeting of industrialists is given out? Say they are to examine secret plans—say anything, as long as you bait the criminal. Broadcast it far and wide. Can you arrange it?”

  “I guess so. What happens then?”

  “The meeting takes place, plans are discussed, shown around, secret documents are handed out for reading—all the trimmings. The meeting doesn’t actually signify anything, but it will look to the outer world like the real thing. You will be at that meeting and so will I, if you’ll allow me. When we’re behind locked doors, we’ll see what is happening, and I’ll gamble my soul that there will be ants in the room somewhere.”

  Davison rubbed his jaw. “Maybe—but it still sounds impossible to me.”

  “That’s the point!” I exclaimed. “It is so damned clever and impossible that it has everybody fooled. Well, we’re going to find out.”

  “And suppose there are ants? How do we get to the culprit?”

  “Science again,” I grinned. “Ever hear of the Sonagraf?”

  “Yeah—ultrasonic detector. We’ve one at the police department.”

  “Then you’ll know it can detect sounds beyond audible range, such as the scrape of a match on a box fifty miles away, the c
rawling of a distant snail, the distinct rapid-fire movement of insect feet. You know that it can blanket every normal sound and detect only the ultrasonic ones beyond audible range?”

  “Heck, yes!” Davison looked at me, startled. “I get it! You figure we can get the apparatus tuned to the feet of the ants—follow them and see where they take us?”

  I nodded. “Right!”

  “Right it is!” he cried. “I’m going back to headquarters right now and make the arrangements. I’ll be back for you the moment I’m all set.”

  * * * *

  In the two days that followed, the inspector did not communicate, but the media gave me enough to know he was on the job. In the news bulletins, Lucy and I heard of new thefts of secrets from industrialists—and also the announcement of a special secret conference of leading industrialists, to be held with every possible ‘precaution.’ It was a masterly bait for a secret-grabbing scientist.

  I could not judge Lucy’s reaction to the announcement because, since her ordeal at the boathouse, she seemed listless and disinclined to discuss the matter any further. Frankly I was worried about her. She looked as though mental worry was causing her far more anguish than any physical ailment. In fact, physically she was okay again.

  I did not question her because I knew I’d get nowhere, and I arranged with Inspector Davison that he should say he wanted me for questioning again, when he finally arrived to collect me for the secret conference.

  Lucy smiled faintly when I told her, said she would be safe enough with so many men on guard. So off I went.

  On the way to town the inspector gave me all the details. The conference was all set. Three ultrasonic mobile units were in plain vans outside the building, their detectors geared to the sound vibration of the world of the little.

  Since every sound is different, even in ultrasonics, it was no more difficult for the crews to tune in on the distinctive noise of an ant’s feet than for a radio to tune in a given station. All other sounds were wiped out by reason of their vastly different wavelengths and the insulated interior of the mobile unit vans.

  Altogether, there was something rather fascinating about this excursion into the world of the diminutive.

  The conference room was on the ground floor of one of New York’s largest administration buildings. Inspector Davison had chosen a conspicuous, well-known place in order to aid the criminal mastermind, and the conference was on a ground floor for the convenience of the detector vans.

  At the appointed time we were all present—industrialists, the inspector, and myself. Numberless plans and official data and documents were scattered around. I urged Davison to take special note of what the plans were about, so we could recognize them again if we saw them at any time in some other place.

  All doors and windows were locked, and the conference began. It signified nothing, but as it proceeded the inspector and I went about the room. Barred doors and windows mean nothing to an ant, anyway… Then suddenly I found something. A motionless ant was poised on the window ledge, looking at the conference table.

  Davison’s eyes widened unbelievingly as he gazed at it. Then he nodded, and we resumed the search. Altogether we located six of the insects, at different vantage points—overhead, on the level, at a distance.

  The first part of our problem was solved…

  The conference broke up thereafter, and we watched the ants gather into a body and pass through the room ventilator to the outside. In the open they were capable of detection. Down we raced to the mobile units and jumped into the first van. The engineers were tensed over their instruments, watching the detectors for direction and giving brief orders to the driver through signal phone.

  So began the weirdest trip I have ever known, following scurrying ants—all six of them keeping together, fortunately—through the city in a soundproof van. Not another sound penetrated, except the distinctive tap, tap, scrape, scrape of the ants’ busy little feet.

  At times we almost lost them in the detectors; then again we caught up. The journey took us through the back streets of the city and finally out toward open country. I gave a frown as we went on. It was slow going, a crawl—but we were definitely going back toward the Corattí estate! Again I wondered if my original guess about Lucy was right. Surely she was not the guilty genius…”

  “It was evening, a thick misty evening, when we lost the sounds completely. Our vans stopped and we all piled out into the mist and gazed around. I recognized the spot after a while. We were about a mile from the estate and half a mile from the river. In fact, we could hear it gurgling in the growing night.

  “They went due north, chief—then they must have gone underground, since the sounds stopped,” one of the technicians said.

  “Due north? Okay, let’s go!”

  “We pulled out flashlights and proceeded through the clumpy grass. We spent plenty of time searching, too—probably an hour and a half, before we came across an almost covered vent that was possibly part of an old sewer system emptying into the river. But it had doors on it now—comparatively new ones, they seemed—and what was more, dried grass was glued onto them to form a perfect camouflage.

  Normally, I doubt if anyone could have found the place in ten years.

  “Locked,” one of the men said, pushing against the doors.

  “Wait!” I said quickly, as Inspector Davison raised his gun to fire at the locks. “Wait a minute! Douse your torch a moment. Isn’t that a crack of light?”

  It was—but it was only a thin fragment, where our hands had torn away parts of the false grass and the wood had warped with incessant river damp.

  The inspector peered inside, and a very strange spectacle we beheld.

  There was a secret laboratory, not very brightly lit. The hum of a dynamo suggested the river was being used for power. But the devil of it was, we could not see our quarry even now—only the shadow! On the wall of the laboratory an indeterminate shape was busy with something, cast in shapeless silhouette.

  Then suddenly everything was dark, and from an angle we could not see there sprang a beam like that from a motion picture projector—except that the beam had a distinct violet tint. Upon a screen near the wall there appeared a ‘still’—a slide, as it seemed—of a plan, perfectly photographed.

  “It’s one of those plans from the conference!” Davison breathed incredulously. “What kind of devil’s witchcraft is this?”

  “I’m more interested in finding out who is in there,” I said slowly. “And I believe I can. Listen, Inspector, will you trust me to go back to the house?”

  “To find out if it’s your wife?” he asked grimly. “We can break in here and find out for ourselves, can’t we?”

  “We can—but this lab is full of chemicals, and I seem to recall an adventure with mercury fulminate. It could happen again. Let me go and see first, Davison. You can stay on guard here and see what else happens.”

  “All right. Standish, go with him for—er—protection.”

  I did not want the company but I was forced to have it—until I gave Standish the slip in the fog. Then I beat it back to the house. Butson was the first person I encountered.

  “My wife? She here?” I demanded.

  “No, Mr. Fowley. The men in the grounds have been asking where she is, too. She went up to her room after you went out today; but when I went up to tell her about dinner, I found she was absent. She must have slipped out when this fog came down. I—”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” I said briefly, and tore outside again.

  CHAPTER VI

  Selenite Vengeance

  The fog was the very devil. I found that despite my knowledge of the district, I was soon hopelessly lost. Easy enough to get from the river, but the deuce of a job to get back to it. I must have staggered in and around the estate for about thirty minutes before I heard the noise of distant water.

  I went forward actively, slipped, and went my length in sloppy mud. I got up and directed my torch downward. I was covered in
mud from head to foot—yellow mud!

  Yellow mud! A remembrance turned in my brain. I was still some way from the towpath, yet the stuff was here, too, probably from winter flooding. I went on, searching the way, and presently a square, squat building loomed out of the reek. The Coratti mausoleum—at the far end of the estate.

  I stopped again, hesitated, then hurriedly advanced. I hadn’t been quite sure, but now my torch left no doubt about it. The bronze doors of the mausoleum were slightly open! And there were the marks of a woman’s shoes—new and fresh marks—leading right to the doors. But why did none come out?

  I blundered into the mausoleum’s silence, flashing my light. The place was quite empty, deadly cold, and the relentless calm of the grave descended upon me. I felt I was a desecrator—but I’d gotten this far and I meant to finish it! I gazed around the walls for a moment, on the sarcophagi of Dr. Corattí and Beryl Coratti in the center of the stone floor, side by side.

  Thoughts chased through my brain; strange thoughts. Was it possible that on the night Lucy said she had been on the towpath, she had really been here? Was it here whence had come the yellow mud on her boots? Again, it was because of her that we had not seen Beryl’s body actually taken to the mausoleum here. Did Lucy have definite reason for wanting it that way?

  I felt I was getting near to the truth at last. I cast aside all ideas on the sanctity of the dead, perched my flashlight on a stone and raised the heavy lid of Beryl’s tomb. I only needed to do it for a moment. Beryl lay there, all right—silent, hands folded on her breast, as if asleep…

  I was feeling a bit unnerved, but I went on. I remarked how much lighter Dr. Coratti’s sarcophagus lid seemed than Beryl’s. It moved easily and I flashed my torch inside the space—but there was no Dr. Coratti there! I dropped the cover back with a gasp, my brain racing at furious speed.

  Suddenly I was icy calm. I felt I had the last clue in my grip. I whirled out of the sepulchral, chilly hole and floundered through mud and fog toward the river. At last I came on the group gathered about the trapdoor of the secret underground laboratory.