“Evidently, the patient has more sense than anybody,” Flint observed dryly. He stood watching, lips compressed, as the male nurses came forward.
“I’ll wait and see what happens,” Ralph went on. He shook Ed’s hand firmly and Ed concealed the surprise he felt as a hard lump of paper was pressed in his palm. What could Ralph be up to?
When he left the hospital a few moments later with the rest of the instruments he found Lloyd waiting for him in the car. Slipping in beside him he unfolded the crumpled note and the pair of them read in mounting surprise.
It was badly written, since Marshall had been unable to see the writing, but it was decipherable nonetheless:
“Don’t endanger anything, Eddie. I’ve been waiting for a chance to give you this note. I have discovered something almost incredible since this side-slipped vision came upon me. It is to my advantage that you let me stay in my cell for the time being. I have one or two things to look into. I think, but cannot yet be sure, that I have happened on a particularly amazing plot in this ‘other world’ which affects ours! And unless I am entirely mistaken, Dr. Talford Flint is mixed up in it somewhere.
“This possibly accounts for his fanatical desire to keep me under lock and key. Once I’m sure of my ground, I’ll pass on the news to you. See me visitors’ day. If you can find out anything about Flint in the meantime, all the better....”
Ed glanced up at Lloyd’s thoughtful face.
“Well?” Ed asked briefly.
Lloyd did not reply; he only smiled as he started up the car’s engine. But his face was preoccupied as he drove through the busy streets.
* * * * * * *
Ralph Marshall had made no idle observation in his note. His cell—for it was little better than that despite its furnishings—unknown to anybody else, was so placed that in the ‘other plane’ it overlaid a small, compact laboratory, in which a solitary, white-garbed scientist seemed to spend nearly fifteen hours of every day.
Invariably, Marshall saw him arrive as soon as it was light; and he remained until about midnight. In the daytime he seemed to spend his time testing medical apparatus, peering into highly efficient microscopes, making notes watching queer animalcules slithering and twisting nauseatingly in glass test tubes.
Certainly Ralph did not like the man’s face. It was cast in a ruthless mould. The lips were thin and tight, the jaw hard and cruel. The eyes, too, had the brittle brightness of a man driven by ambition to the exclusion of all finer sentiments. There were times when he seemed pleased to watch a queer, unknown animal—probably the equivalent of a terrestrial guinea pig—twisting in near-death under the influence of some mystic fluid he had injected into it. Apparently he was working in secret, for nobody ever came to see him and he prepared all his own meals.
But above all things it was the notes he made so assiduously that interested Ralph. By walking the length of his cell, he was able to look over the scientist’s shoulder and read what was being put down. So far, his knowledge of the language was limited, but there were parts of it he understood, and in particular one name which was bound to be the same in any language—Flint.
Was it referring to the chief of this very hospital? That was what Ralph wanted to find out: it was his one reason for submitting so tamely to captivity. What connection had Flint—if it was the same man—with this trap-jawed scientist of another plane of existence, so close, and yet so infinitely far away?
Most puzzling of all to Ralph were the evenings. He would watch the Unknown sit for nearly two hours in a chair, motionless, his head tilted back on two leather pads like those adorning a dentist’s chair. As he sat, his hand was at work on a neighboring scratchpad, making all manner of notes, mainly chemical symbols in which Ralph was not in the least versed.
It did not, however, take much deduction to discover that the daytime laboratory work was based on the evening-time notes—but why did the Unknown have to sit like that? Ralph cudgeled his brains over it for many days but he got no solution. As a matter of fact, it was Ed Rutter who worked on that particular mystery.
Determined on his own account to more fully confirm Ralph’s vague suspicions of Flint, he entered the hospital grounds by night—once Lloyd had discovered by various surreptitious methods exactly what part of the hospital the doctor occupied in his private moments—climbed the railings, and slid softly past the great isolation wards to the doctors’ chambers’ wing to the east of the hospital. To him it was not a difficult feat to climb to the balcony: his work in the Shaft had made him an adept climber.
He spent some little time discovering which window belonged to Dr. Flint’s room, traced it finally from the rough sketch Lloyd had drawn. His hopes were verified when Flint came into the room, switched on the light, and without drawing the shades sat down at his desk to write.
Ed smiled grimly, withdrew from his pocket a tiny, flat microphone, which Lloyd had given him. It went easily under the door-size window leading out onto the balcony. The rest of the instrument, hung around Ed’s neck like a medallion, began to record whatever the microphone picked up.
Ed switched on the button and waited, listening to the small-size earphone. He heard nothing beyond the scratching of a pen. After a couple of minutes he tensed when a man came into the room beyond.
He recognized him as one of the doctors who seemed to be Flint’s right-hand man. After closing the door and locking it he came over to the desk.
“Not too late, am I?” he asked briefly. “I had that operation to finish on old Saunders.”
“No, Dutton.” Flint tossed aside his pen. “I haven’t started yet....”
“How long do you think it will be before we’re ready?”
“Depends. Perhaps a week. There’s little time to lose now. And besides I want to get everything perfectly arranged before this guy Marshall happens to discover the truth. It’s not likely that he will while locked in that cell—but if any fluke law can be brought along to release him he might discover plenty. Only by having freedom could he possibly come across Maravok’s laboratory—and even at that only chance could lead him there. Just the same I’ve warned Maravok that we have a fellow with us whose eyes are geared to his particular space. He told me he was working on a visionary detector by which he’ll be instantly warned if alien eyes discover him. Clever man, Maravok....” Flint’s voice was full of grudging praise.
Outside, Ed stood listening tensely, frowning in wonderment. On his chest the medallion-sized instrument was recording every word.
“About this fellow Lloyd,” Dutton mused. “He’s damnably quiet, isn’t he? In face of all he said he’d do? Think he’s up to something?”
Flint laughed harshly. “Not him! The man’s a clown—the biggest clown in New York City. He thinks he’s a detective, a scientist, and God knows what all rolled into one. Five feet of empty boasting, my friend, and a lot of phony instruments to back him up....”
“Phony enough to prove that Marshall was and is looking into the plane you contacted,” Dutton pointed out uneasily.
“Well—yes,” Flint admitted. “Rather a good thing he did find that, out for it enabled us to know that Marshall’s eyes are geared to the plane I’ve contacted. I suspected it might be so when Rutter called us to have a look at him in the first place. Most amazing case, Dutton. Yet, deeply though it stirs my professional curiosity, I cannot admit the truth of it with so much at stake. He must be kept out of the way, until we’re ready, anyway. Then it doesn’t matter what he does!”
“Suppose Lloyd does manage to find a legal excuse for extracting Marshall? I don’t think he’s such a mug as he pretends to be.”
“That,” Flint said, “is a risk we have to take. We’ve got to stall for time until I have every detail. If the worst comes to the worst, we can always arrange an—er—alteration of diet for Mr. Marshall which will make him too ill to be moved. We dare not kill him off: that would involve too searching an inquiry.”
In the brief silence that followed Ed controlled a f
ierce impulse to kick the glass window through, open the door, and dash into the room. He wanted to beat the living daylights out of the callous hospital chief. Only the realization of the necessity for subtlety kept him in check.
Presently Flint spoke again. “Well, time’s up!”
Ed peered cautiously through the window as silence dropped. Flint was seated in the armchair, head lying back on the cushion, hands resting lightly on the chair arms. He was gazing into space straight in front of him. Dutton was sitting opposite to him with a notebook and pencil, waiting.
“Now!” Flint exclaimed suddenly; then he started to talk in a quiet, monotonous voice. “Having thoroughly impregnated the fluid, drop the cultures into it. There will be rapid metabolism. Then—”
The monologue veered into the profoundest technique possible, and could only interest a medical expert. But the thought of cultures and fluids, that certain sinister suggestion of a deep medical experiment, remained uncomfortably in Ed’s brain. He waited for an hour until Flint had obviously finished, then he withdrew the microphone gently, climbed back over the balcony, and departed. This was definitely getting into deep waters, and only one man could swim in them—Brutus Lloyd.
III. BACILLI-X
The morning after Ed’s activities, Dr. Lloyd turned up at the hospital during the usual visiting hours. A nurse creaking with starch led him down the white-enameled corridor to Ralph’s room and admitted him.
“Ten minutes,” she proclaimed curtly, and locked the door behind her as she departed.
Ralph rose at the familiar bass voice, shook the small hand warmly.
“I’ve discovered something—” he started to say, but the scientist cut him short.
“You have discovered something! Ralph, you don’t know what a discovery is. Leave that to me! I will admit—A, that your friend Ed Rutter was helpful, and—B, that I might not have thought of the idea otherwise. But my genius provided the instruments.... Listen!”
Lloyd went into a complete recounting of Ed’s adventures the previous night, slapping the table with his umbrella for emphasis.
“Fervet opus—the work goes on busily,” he finished in triumph.
“Seems to me,” Ralph said slowly, “that there’s only one explanation. This guy who you say is called Maravok does exactly the same thing as Flint. He sits back and rests his head as Flint apparently does.... Oh, I forgot. You don’t know all the details about the laboratory, I can see. It’s like this....”
“Telepathy!” Lloyd announced when the story was over.
“Yes; telepathy. I was going to say that. There is no barrier to thought reaching into this other plane, is there?”
“None whatever. In fact, we contact these planes in the normal way. We have all had the feeling of being watched in an empty room, or that ‘I have been here before’ sensation. I should say a trained telepathist might get into touch with other planes around us. More of us might see these planes if our eyes were as cockeyed as yours. But what is Flint driving at?” The umbrella stubbed the floor impatiently. “So far as I can make out from the record he made, Flint is constantly taking down details of a medical experiment devised by this guy Maravok.”
“Just the same as Maravok is taking details from Flint,” Ralph puzzled. “It’s an exchange of information. See here!” Ralph pulled his scratchpad from his pocket. “You take this and see if you can understand what it’s all about. Most of it is in medical terms; stuff I’ve taken down from looking over Maravok’s shoulder. Not very well written, I know, but maybe you can figure out something. His figuring seems to be perfectly similar to ours, and some of the terms may make sense to you. You know most things in medicine....”
“All things in medicine,” Lloyd corrected modestly, thrusting the pad in his pocket. “The more I see of this, the less I like it,” he went on. “This fellow Flint is the least angelic person I’ve ever met. Telepathy, medical experiments, cultures, and so forth, when practised by him spell something sinister. However, maybe I’ll find out something from these notes. I’ll be back again next visitor’s day and tell you how I’ve got on—also to learn anything you may have found out.”
Ralph nodded. The door lock clicked as the nurse returned.
“I forgot to tell you,” Lloyd said, as he turned to go. “Ed sent his regards, or his love, or something.... He’s at work and couldn’t make it. Ought to be his own master, like me. Much better! Well—nil desperandum....”
Lloyd met no official as he passed down the corridor, looking like an underpaid clerk. Though there was no law against his presence in the hospital, he preferred if possible to avoid a direct contact with Dr. Flint. And he managed it successfully.
Half an hour later he was in his laboratory, perched like a gnome on a toadstool before his desk, poring over the scrawled notes of Ralph, then listening to the playback from the recording Ed had made. The more he pondered over them, the grimmer his resolute little face became. Certain technical terms leapt readily to his mind, and where they were in a different language the interpretation, from the formula itself, left little doubt as to the actual meaning.
For two hours Brutus Lloyd brooded stroking his “J” of hair at intervals. Thus Ed Rutter found him during the lunch hour when he slipped in to inquire as to any progress that had been made.
“Anything fresh?” he asked quickly. “You saw Ralph?”
“Sure I saw him....” Lloyd slid from his stool and paced the laboratory slowly, hands deep in his smock pockets. Then looking up sharply he said, “I believe we’ve happened on something unimaginably big! We—or at any rate Ralph—have unearthed a medical plot which for sheer villainy beats anything I ever heard of! So far as I can make out, this person Maravok is about as ruthless in his ideas as Flint himself. Both of them are—A, exchanging medical information; B, Flint is telling Maravok how to nurture cholera germs which are apparently unknown in this other space, and against which there is no protection; and—C, in return, Flint is finding out from Maravok how to cultivate a bacilli which will cause paralysis and death when introduced into the human system! It is a bacillus entirely unknown to us, and Flint would be able to start something as virulent as the Black Death!”
Ed’s eyes opened wider. “Hell, we have found something!”
“I have found something,” Lloyd averred, his eyelids drooping insolently.
“Well anyway, it’s been found. But listen, why should two men telepathically exchange secrets concerning plagues in their respective lands? It doesn’t even make sense....”
“Corruptio optimi pessima—the corruption of the best is worst,” Lloyd sighed. “Two clever men pawning genius for gross material gains. Look at the situation and what do we find? A—Flint is head of the hospital. B, he is in a fixed position that any qualified medico could take over. C, a Plague hits the country. An unknown, smashing Plague! What then? Suppose he—Flint—were the only man with an antidote? And he has an antidote; I’m convinced of that.... The demand for his services would be colossal. His antidote, or serum, would net him millions of dollars. He, and whoever else is in on the job—there will be others I’m sure—would reap a fortune. You see? A deadly plan with human lives as the means to an end. Since Flint can probably cure all those who are impregnated, he probably considers it is quite a safe move and not a murder risk. It’s clever, though I’m loath to admit it. Damned clever!”
“Of course we tell the police?” Ed demanded.
“And tell them Ralph Marshall saw most of this in another plane of space?” Lloyd asked. “You overrate the imagination of the law, my friend. I could explain it to my friend Inspector Branson, but without solid proof even he might become a trifle annoyed. No, I intend to nurture the bacilli for myself first and find out their potentialities. If they turn out as I expect, I shall hand the results to the police chemists to satisfy themselves. As for Flint, his recorded voice is enough to convict him. But we must be sure! I must also know exactly what his past history has been.”
“I’d he
lp you if I could,” Ed said, rather anxiously. “As it is, I’m tied up during the day, but I could go to the hospital again by night and try to—”
“Emphatically no!” Lloyd slapped his tiny hand on the bench. “You did it once and got away with it; next time you might not be so lucky. Anyway, I have all I need for evidence. If Flint gets wind of our plans, it will put Ralph in a spot. Just leave things as they are and rely on me. Now, get out. I’ve work to do.”
Lloyd completed his medical experiments during the afternoon. In the evening Ed Rutter found himself gazing through the microscope upon twirling, squirming life-forms of minute size drifting through thick fluid.
Lloyd gave a rather harsh laugh. “Bacilli-X,” he commented grimly, handling the slide with care as he returned the culture to the glass phial. “There’s enough in this tube to reduce the population of New York to paralysis. The devils multiply like hell....”
“What’s next?” Ed asked briefly.
“Next we track down Flint’s history from the medical records....” Lloyd locked the culture phial away in the safe securely, then scrambled into his vast overcoat. He nodded toward the door.
They began with the library and studied Flint’s career from Who’s Who. His career had been distinguished. He had degrees without number, but it was the nature of his various published works that gave an insight as to the real man. In three years he had published Crime and Medicine, Possibilities of Thought Transference, Telepathy, Mind and Inter-Space, Criminal Action and Reaction, and The Psychology of Crime.
Lloyd, satisfied, headed for the nearest booksellers before they closed and managed to buy every one of the books enumerated. Then he returned home. Without a word, an overlong pipe crackling in his mouth, he settled down to read. Ed started to read too, because there was nothing else he could do. But he had no idea of what the diminutive scientist was looking for.
As a matter of fact, Lloyd read for three consecutive nights, probably the days too, for all Ed knew to the contrary, before he seemed to arrive at a conclusion. On the third evening, shutting the last of the volumes with characteristic abruptness, he said:
A Case for Brutus Lloyd Page 3