The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  "Late? Why? You can put up your idealizator again. You'd do that much, wouldn't you?"

  "Van Manderpootz," he observed, "is the very soul of generosity. I'd do it gladly, but it's still a little late, Dixon. You see, she married the bright young psychiatrist this noon."

  Well, I've a date with Tips Alva tonight, and I'm going to be late for it, just as late as I please. And then I'm going to do nothing but stare at her lips all evening.

  The Lady Dances

  CHAPTER I

  AFTERMATH

  “JUST the same," said John Talbot to his brother with a gesture of futility, as they stood at the San Francisco docks, "You're a fool, Mark. You've got everything to hold you back in Spring Brook—everything that the average person wants."

  "Everything!" Mark snapped. "Everything means a respectable roof and three meals a day, I suppose. A chance to rot in an office, and a chance to marry a Connecticut belle. Spring Brook and the law business. Bah!"

  "Do you think I flew clear across the country," queried John sarcastically, "just to hear you repeat your objections to sane living?"

  Mark Talbot looked at his brother with that sullen expression which had become habitual of late. It was as if he had some means of erecting a frowning psychic wall between them.

  "You're a queer duck!" said John, staring at his brother's profile against the glowing western sky. A real Talbot, he thought—so like himself in appearance, but so young, so independent, so restless. He hadn't really understood Mark since the War; something had severed them. John sighed, and tried again. "I don't mean just that, Mark," he said. "I mean, you should consider the family—Mother and sister, and, for that matter, myself. Not money, or material things, but—well, domestic security, and the Talbot tradition—"

  "You mean smugness and dry rot," interrupted Mark sharply. "Just because you're married and harnessed, you want to see me in the same predicament." John winced, and Mark was instantly contrite.

  "I'm' sorry, John. You know I think Marie's a peach, and it's not, her fault, her father is so puritanical. Only—not for me!"

  "Well, said John, "I think you're foolish. The War's over. You had your fling at adventure, and did well enough. Now forget it and settle down."

  "The War's not over for me. After a taste of real living and real thrills—Oh pshaw! I can't explain it to you, John. You weren't there."

  Again John's face darkened.

  "That wasn't my fault, you know I tried—before you did."

  "No, it wasn't your fault they turned you down, of course. But you weren't there, and you don't realize quite what it did to a person. After flames and racket and death—to come back to the life of an office in the family law mill, to substitute legal arguments with crooked opponents for battle, and the problems of the law court for a life-or-death struggle—"

  Mark paused, and turned to face John again.

  "It's no use trying, John. I've tried it for three years now, and I can't stand it!"

  "But we let you go once—"

  "Listen to me, John!" interrupted Mark. "I guess I'm an anachronism—either that, or a born black sheep. I suppose I was intended to be a soldier of fortune or an adventurer, but I happened to be born into a world where adventure, except for one overly-expensive war, is at a discount. And here's the point: You know as well as I do that another year in Spring Brook would end in some sort of scandal. Isn't it better for me to travel, to get far enough away so my black sheep propensities won't bother the family?"

  John shrugged.

  "There's no law requiring you to get into trouble," he said.

  "There is, though," replied Mark, "and it happens to be a law of nature. When you bottle up steam, it piles up pressure for a while, and then—bang! But if you let it escape, there's no explosion at all, just a pleasant sizzling. What I'm trying to do is find myself a safety valve, and so far the only thing can see that offers any promised success is travel — and travel to some of the less civilized regions of the world. I'm sick of the drabness and restrictions of civilization."

  "Well," said John slowly. "I don't seem to be able to impress my point of view on you. Of course you're old enough to know your own mind, but I should think your mother's wishes would have some small influence with you."

  "Mother would be all right if you let her alone," said Mark. "She caught some of Dad's spirit, and she's quite capable of understanding my feelings. And that, John, is somewhat more than I can say for you!"

  "It is? Well, I understood you well enough to see the uselessness of this wild goose chase across the continent for the purpose of a last minute argument with you! It was because of your mother that I'm here at all!"

  "Yeah," said Mark dryly. "I can hear the family argument, and especially your part.” He assumed a nasal, pompous tone. " 'Leave him to me, mother. I'll talk to him; it'll be all right!'"

  John flushed.

  "I'm through arguing with you, Mark," he said. 'I've given you the family's wishes, and I've given you my own viewpoint. If neither sentiment nor reason has any weight with you, I don't see what else I can do about it. Your money's your own, and so is your interest in the practice. Now go ahead and get yourself into trouble!"

  "I've been around," answered Mark with a grin. "Any trouble I get into won't bounce back on the family."

  "It had better not!" said John darkly.

  The two brothers fell silent for a moment both eyeing the colossal bulk of the steamship Orient, so massive that it towered beside the dock without perceptible motion from the oily swells of the Bay. The sun was dropping lower across the Pacific; sailing time was approaching, and the two turned scarcely seeing glances on the crowd and bustle that marked departure, which had flowed around them for the past half-hour.

  A trickling stream of last minute arrivals moved past them toward the gang-plank. Business men, tourists, vacationers — Mark eyed them indifferently; they were the representatives of the world from which he was fleeing, the security, the routine, the smugness which was all he could see in America. John paid them even less attention; deep in a reverie, he hardly saw them at all.

  A portly old gentleman puffed by, followed at a little distance by a slender girl in a severely dark dress, accompanied by some port official or other. Mark shifted his eyes casually to her face, and suffered a sudden awakening from his cogitations. He glimpsed a small, ruby-lipped mouth, a tiny, up-tilted nose, and a pair of very dark eyes, all framed by a semi-circle of blue-black hair beneath her hat. But the lips were set in a straight, sullen line, and the dark eyes, for the instant they met Mark's own, gazed into his with a stare of cold enmity.

  She withdrew her glance, and passed the two with her eyes sternly ahead, and a sort of grim resignation in her attitude.

  "Whew!" said Mark, turning to gaze after her as she and her companion mounted the gang-plank. "Pretty! Darn pretty! But I wonder what she thinks I ever did to her?"

  "Eh?" said John, startled out of his mood of thought. He turned to follow Mark's gaze, and a quizzical smile of despair spread over his features.

  "Mark, you're hopeless!" he exclaimed. 'I give up! I'm through arguing! Once and for all, are you going?"

  "I'm going!" said Mark decisively.

  "Right!" said John. "Then, if it's settled, I want you to know that I our best wishes, and the family's love, go with you. I want you to know that."

  He paused, shifting a little, as if fumbling for words. Thoughts did not flow so easily into words for the quiet John as for the fluent, irrepressible Mark.

  "And one other thing," he continued awkwardly. "Don't be so cocksure that I'm just a dried-up old fogey, without the insight to understand your viewpoint. After all, once I was just as young as you are, and I haven't entirely forgotten how it feels to be young—no one ever does."

  He paused again.

  "What I'm trying to say, kid, is this. Just work the restlessness out of your system, and then come back. I hope you have a good time, but I hope it won't take too long."

  Mark st
ared at his older brother in amazement. This from John, whom he had grown to consider the very soul of sedate conservatism! Was it possible, he asked himself, was it possible that even John had his doubtful moments—his longings and dreams of other places and happier times?

  Indeed, now that he thought of it, he remembered a different John, a carefree, irresponsible chap full of the joy of life. That had been long ago, before their father's death, and before John's marriage. Life had changed John, he thought; he felt puzzled, and a bit touched and repentant. He grinned and held out his hand.

  "Apologies for my opinion, John," he said. "I guess it's the Talbot stubbornness in me that kept me from admitting it, and you from explaining. I inherited rather more than my share, it seems."

  John grasped his brother's hand. A long warning shriek from the Orient's siren interrupted them. "My stuff is aboard," said Mark, "and I'd better get along myself. Luck!"

  "Luck!" said his brother.

  John stood for a long time watching the great dark bulk sliding into the western seas toward the exotic ports of the Pacific. There was a regretful smile on his face as he turned finally toward the city, for the journey back to Spring Brook and the ways of business; he acknowledged a trace of envy toward that brother who sailed toward the sunset in search of adventure.

  CHAPTER II

  ALONG THE GREAT CIRCLE

  "I guess I was born to be a soldier of fortune," Mark told himself. "Probably every adventurer had this same unpleasant job of breaking family ties before he managed to cut loose."

  The first night on shipboard had found Mark at last relaxed, freed from the pressure of routine for the first time in three years. At last he felt a sensation of freedom, and no little satisfaction that John and the family had taken his departure so philosophically. He lay in his deck chair and smoked.

  "Shouldn't wonder," he continued, pursuing his vein of thought, "if Columbus hadn't suffered through a quarrel with his mother —or his wife, if he had one—before setting out on his well-known voyage."

  The fancy amused Mark. He was content to dream idly, to listen to the slap of severed waves on the vessel's sides, to watch the swift coursing of wispy white clouds across a moon three-quarters full. "Gibbous" is the term, Mark reflected, watching the silvery face of the satellite. It was late when he wandered contentedly to his stateroom and slumber.

  The next day was ideal. The great ocean that girdles half the globe of the world lived up to its name of Pacific. Long green swells raced to meet the speeding Orient, dividing smoothly at the prow, and rushing quietly astern. The air was warm even for March in the latitude of California, and lacy clouds still soared against an unbelievably blue sky.

  Mark's mood of elation still held. He strolled out on deck after breakfast, content merely to breathe in his sense of freedom. A knot of passengers was watching a school of marine animals—dolphins or porpoise—frolicking far off the starboard bow to the North.

  Mark's deck-chair was on the sunny side. He idled toward it; the chair to his left was unoccupied, but a promising blonde girl with bright bobbed curls sat in the one to his right, conversing with an older woman in the chair beyond. Mother and daughter, Mark decided; probably tourist bound for Hawaii, although the season, strictly speaking, was over.

  Still, most mortals can't choose their outings and vacations to suit themselves, he continued to himself. Too many obligations, duties, strictures of necessity, for free choice; and when they did win a few months of freedom, it was temporary. They were still on the tether; it was lengthened a bit, but it would tighten by and by, and drag them back to the discordancies of civilization. But not him! He had broken the tether.

  The blonde girl and her mother were leaning over a map and a compass, and arguing in somewhat more than audible tones. Mark listened rather disinterestedly.

  "But see here, Mother! The compass says we're going due west, and the map shows Honolulu way off southwest. And I'm sure the compass is right. Joel gave it to me!"

  "I wouldn't worry, Dear," replied the other placidly.

  "I'm not worrying! Only I'd like to know why they don't take the shortest way, and go straight southwest. Think of the time and fuel and wear and tear, and all that, that could be saved. I've half a mind to ask the Captain!"

  Mark listened in amusement while the argument continued. But he was in a genial mood, and felt disposed to save the Captain an unnecessary explanation. He glanced at his neighbors, catching the girl's eye.

  "If you don't mind," he said, "I think I can explain your difficulty."

  Instantly the girl swung toward him, passing her eyes deliberately over his figure from his unruly brown hair and blue eyes to the long legs sprawled negligently before him. Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory.

  "Oh, please do!" she exclaimed. "I'm sure it's a perfectly fascinating reason!"

  "Well," said Mark, "the ship follows a course called the Great Circle route. You see, your map is flat, I while the surface of the earth is round. So while the map quite properly shows Honolulu southwest of San Francisco, it doesn't follow that the shortest way is to travel southwest."

  He paused, at a loss to make his explanation clear.

  "Go on!" said his companion, while her mother nodded placidly. "It's perfectly fascinating!"

  "Now suppose," Mark continued, "that you wanted to fly from—well, from Chicago to Pekin, China. They're about in the same latitude. You wouldn't fly straight west along I the forty-sixth parallel. That would be going around too much of the dearth's bulge. It would be a lot shorter to fly up toward the North Pole, over the top of the earth and down the other side—that's a Great Circle route. I don't know if I make it very clear," he ended lamely.

  "I think it's perfectly marvelous," said the girl.

  "So to get from San Francisco to Honolulu," Mark finished, "the ship steams due west at first, and gradually veers more and more south. It's really the shortest way."

  "It's wonderful the way they figure all that out!" said his companion. "Are you from Chicago?"

  "No," said Mark, already repenting his overtures, "nor from Pekin, either. I'm from Connecticut."

  "That's perfectly splendid!" said the girl.

  "If you'll pardon me," said Mark. "I'll run down to my stateroom, and see about the disposal of my luggage."

  He departed, and spent half an hour wandering about the saloon, and returned above for a turn about the deck. As he approached his own deck chair, the voice of his erstwhile companion caught his attention. He glanced ahead; she had changed chairs with her mother, and was again poring over her map with a mustached young English; man at her right.

  "It's just fascinating, the way you explain it!" she was saying. "I know exactly what a Great Circle is!"

  She looked up as Mark approached, and flushed as their eyes met. Mark smiled and nodded, and passed on.

  "Mistake number one," he told himself. "I'll bet she has her chair changed!"

  He dismissed the voluble, sunny-haired girl from his mind. Suddenly he bethought himself of the dark haired beauty who had passed him yesterday on t dock. He hadn't seen her, either at dinner the night before or at breakfast this morning, nor had she appeared on deck or in the saloon.

  "Second class cabin, perhaps," he thought, and went below. She wasn't on the B-deck, either; that proved nothing, of course; she might be in her stateroom.

  "She was a knockout, all right," he reflected. "Wonder what was the meaning of the nasty look she gave me."

  Quite casually he descended to the steerage. There was a small but motley group; a clatter of conversation from half the Asian world assailed him. He stood surveying the assembly; a number of Chinese, on their way home to their troubled motherland with hoarded American silver, two or three individuals of the darker races—Negro, East Indian, Malay, Mark didn't know which—and a single diminutive Japanese. They mostly traveled in style, the Japs, Mark thought. This one must have had a run of bad luck.

  Then he saw her, the black-haired beauty of the do
ck. She was sitting near a China woman who nursed a baby, on a wall bench not fifteen feet from where Mark stood. She was staring past him with her dark, sullen eyes; at his start, her glance shifted, moved over him as casually as if he had been a chair or a piece of baggage.

  She was beautiful, Mark decided at this second appraisal. Trim, slender, and slightly more than average height for a girl—Mark thought she might just top his shoulder. Her small white hands gripped the edge of the seat against the slight motion of the ship, and her feet, drawn back under the bench, looked unbelievably tiny. Her face was set in the same expression of helpless rebellion against something—some one, Mark wondered what.

  He was nonplussed. It didn't seem the thing to address her, under the circumstances. He wanted to talk to her, but the surprise of finding her here had for the moment upset his usual poise. While he hesitated, the girl's black eyes passed over him again, rested for a moment with a cold gaze on his own eyes, and moved away. Mark turned, and walked out of the door in some confusion.

  He encountered the Captain on A-deck.

  "Captain Rawlinson!" he exclaimed. "There's a white woman in the steerage!"

  "Well?" said the officer.

  "But—isn't it unusual? What's she doing there?"

  "She's being deported — immigrant turned back at Frisco."

  "Turned back? Why?"

  "Couldn't say. None of my business. I think she's Russian—name's Vanya Prokovna. Maybe she's a Bolshevik."

  The Captain turned to move on. "But where's she going?" persisted Mark.

  "Don't know that either. I drop her at Honolulu."

  Mark leaned thoughtfully over the rail, seeing in the boiling of dark waters the image of a girl with stormy, troubled eyes.

  CHAPTER III

  SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCES

  Mark smiled as he found the deck-chair to his right occupied by an elderly bearded gentleman whom he recognized as Professor MacQuane, one of the passengers placed at Mark's table. There was no sign of the blonde seeker after knowledge nor her mother. The Professor barely glanced up from his book to answer Mark's greeting; he had been a silent table companion too, Mark recalled.