It was on the first page:
NOTED FINANCIER DEAD
Whitman Chambers III Victim of Mysterious Attack
DAUGHTER MISSING
Graham didn’t eat any dinner. By midnight that night, wearing the rough clothes and the tennis shoes he had bought, his face and hands darkened with black cork, he was in the little valley below Featherstone’s four level house.
* * * *
A night wind came slowly up the little valley. It rustled the leaves of the trees with an infinity of scratchy sounds. It was a cool wind, too cool for August, and it seemed to be moving in from outer space and trying to hug the earth for warmth. Overhead the stars glimmered in the night, pale dots of light in comparison to the brightly shining moon.
Graham did not know whether or not he liked that moon. The moonlight helped him to see where he was going. On the other hand, it might make it easier for him to be seen. His dark clothes would reflect no light and the cork on his face and hands ought to make his skin invisible but he had the unhappy feeling that there might be something here in this place that could see in darkness.
A light was visible on the third level of Featherstone’s hideout. The new building that had been constructed beside the garage was dark. There were no windows in this building and only one door. The door was sheathed in sheet steel, Graham discovered, as he came cautiously around the building. He didn’t try to open the door. He listened. Hair raised along the back of his neck.
The building sounded like a beehive.
Through the steel door, he could hear a muted humming, a buzzing, like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. Notes rising suddenly sharp and shrill were like the quick darting of individual bees testing their wings in flight. In the background was the steady hum of the swarm.
The sound of big bees!
Hackles of tiny hair raised all over Graham’s body as he listened to that sound. The oldest fear of the race, the fear of unnatural death, pounded with his bloodstream through his body. Natural death was bad enough but through familiarity the mind had learned to accept natural death as an inevitable fact but unnatural death the mind of no man had yet learned how to accept.
Bees that were not bees, big bees, bees that moved too fast for the eyes to follow, bees that came through a closed window, blurring the glass, bees that went through a steel box, blurring the sides but leaving no mark of their passing.
Had Whitman Chambers heard the sound of a bee before he died? Or had the bee come too quickly for him to hear it?
Would George Graham hear the sound of a bee before he died? Would the rapid darting of an angry bee roar in his ears just before his body froze?
The door of the building scraped as it started to open.
Graham slid back into the shadows.
Featherstone came out of the door. Louie, his assistant, followed him. Louie closed but did not lock the door.
“One more load and we’ll have everything moved in here,” Featherstone said. “Between you and me, Louie, I’ll be damned glad when we get this job done.”
“You and me both,” Louie fervently answered. He looked furtively around and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you think we can get away from here tomorrow?”
“Don’t ever say that!” Featherstone hissed. “Don’t even think it!”
Featherstone glanced quickly over his shoulder at the closed door. In the moonlight his face looked haggard and old.
Except for the heavy hum of the power transformer on the pole at the end of the building, there was no sound. Featherstone cocked his head and listened. The night wind went softly past, rustling the leaves of the trees.
“Come on,” Featherstone said, his voice unnecessarily loud as if he spoke for the benefit of unseen listeners. “We still have work to do tonight.”
* * * *
Graham stared in dumfounded amazement after them as they stalked up the hill toward the lighted room. His amazement abruptly grew to startled incredulity when he saw the girl step out of the shadow of a tree and say:
“Hands up!”
He knew that girl, would know her anywhere he heard her speak. Mildred Chambers! Missing in New York, present here, present with a gun in her hand! Present, and talking like a highwayman, briskly saying, “Hands up!” over the threat of a gun. He admired her courage. It was a splendid thing, much better than her judgment.
Both men quickly lifted their arms. Then Featherstone recognized the girl behind the gun.
“Miss Chambers!” he said.
“That’s right,” the girl answered.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I came after you,” she answered.
“After me?” There was astonishment in his voice. “May I ask why?”
“As if you didn’t know!” Hot bitterness surged in Mildred Chambers’ voice. She came closer to him, the gun held very steady. “You—you murderer!”
“What?” Featherstone gasped.
“Walk up that path,” the girl ordered. “Keep your hands in the air, both of you.”
She startled to slip past them on the sloping hillside. Her purpose was to get behind them and force them to walk up the path ahead of her.
Her foot slipped on the steep slope. As she tried to catch herself, the gun momentarily pointed down. Featherstone reached out a long arm and snatched it from her grasp. Louie grabbed her. She squealed, tried to scream. Louie’s hand clamped over her mouth.
Skirts flying in the air as she tried to kick herself free, the two men carried her through the lighted door.
Graham had already made up his mind. She had asked for trouble when she came here. A little rough handling would hurt nothing but her dignity. Before he went up and rescued her, he wanted a peek behind that steel-sheathed door.
He opened the door the tiniest crack. The sound of darting bees was loud in his ears.
A spray of light was flooding up from a dark receptacle in the far corner of the building. The light was an intense violet color, so violet that it hurt the eyes. The bees were playing in the spray of light.
There were four or five of them. Moving faster than the eye could follow, Graham could not count them. He could see glimmerings of flashing light darting into and through the spray of up-flung violet illumination.
Feeding, playing, bathing? He could hot tell. The things were doing something, he did not know what. Featherstone’s devils. Like the devil that had come through the window of the Swami’s New York studio, that had come out of the night. Graham seemed to hear again the howling of a frightened little dog. Five devils. Playing in violet light. Graham’s eyes began to hurt as he stared at them, tried to follow their darting motion.
* * * *
Flashing in and out of the violet glow, they were as beautiful as humming birds playing in a sunbeam. He would have been entranced by the sight, if—if a frightened dog had not kept howling somewhere in the back of his mind.
The building in which they were playing was a single room. Wooden posts supported the roof. Workbenches were built along two sides. The whole structure had the appearance of hasty improvisation. It was crammed almost to the roof with electrical equipment.
Part of the equipment appeared to have been put into place and the building erected around it. Looking at the building and especially at the electrical equipment in it, Graham could easily guess where a good part of Whitman Chambers’ hundred thousand dollars had gone.
Graham looked only an instant, then softly closed the door. He had the feeling that he had risked his life a dozen times over in opening the door for only a second.
He slipped silently up the path to the lighted window. Mildred Chambers was sitting in a chair. Featherstone was standing in front of her.
“You called me a murderer.” Featherstone was saying. “What did you mean by that?”
“You killed my father,”
the girl answered. Graham wondered if she had gone hopelessly crazy. People who had good sense didn’t call murder by its right name when they were in the presence of the murderer and in his power.
Featherstone looked blank. “Are you mad? I killed your father! That is ridiculous nonsense. I haven’t seen your father since he left my last séance and he was in good health when he left my studio.”
“You killed him just the same,” the girl insisted. “The same way you killed the dog.”
“What?” Featherstone’s blank look deepened.
“You did it. I found him myself. Oh, I know you probably can’t be legally convicted of the crime, but you’re guilty just the same.”
Featherstone stared at her. “Now, now, child,” he said soothingly. “I know you are all mixed up and confused and frightened. You are imagining things, aren’t you? Come now, tell the truth. You made up this fantastic story, didn’t you? You can tell the truth. No one is going to hurt you.”
Mildred Chambers stared at him in utter bewilderment. “You—you talk as if you don’t know what happened!”
“I’m sure nothing happened, child. I’m sure this is only your imagination.”
“Don’t—don’t you ever read the papers?” she asked.
Surprise showed on his lean face. He looked quickly at his assistant. “Louie—”
“They’re over there on the table,” Louie answered. “I brought them from the mail box this afternoon but you were too busy to look at them.”
Featherstone snatched the still unrolled newspaper from the table. His fingers shook as he tore it open. He glanced at the front page.
As he read the news story, Featherstone began to look more and more like an old man. The fire of life, the zest for living, went out of him like air cut out of a punctured toy balloon.
Graham saw how preoccupied Featherstone was with the story in the paper. He opened the door and stepped quietly into the room.
“Is it that bad, Swami?” he asked.
* * * *
Mildred Chambers took one look at him and screamed. To her, he looked like a ghoul coming unobtrusively out of the darkness.
He had forgotten the burnt cork daubed on his face and hands.
“Take it easy, baby,” he said.
She recognized his voice and flew to him. His eyes on Featherstone and Louie, he drew his gun.
“Don’t either of you get any ideas,” he said.
Louie, his eyes on the gun, halted the sudden flash of his hand toward his coat pocket.
Featherstone glanced up from the paper, blinked at Graham, then continued reading.
Graham stared at him. “His most dangerous enemy comes into the room with a gun in his hand and he doesn’t even notice!” he whispered.
“What?” Mildred Chambers said.
“I come in here and pull a gun and Featherstone doesn’t even pay any attention to me!” he said.
“Do you feel slighted?”
“Do you know any prayers?”
She stared at him like she was trying to see through the cork and make certain it was actually Graham underneath.
“You better be saying them, if you know any to say.” Graham answered. He watched Featherstone, never for an instant taking his eyes off the man. Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched Louie.
Still unaware of Graham, Featherstone finished reading about Whitman Chambers and the way Whitman Chambers had died. Casually, without seeming to notice what he was doing, he laid the paper on the table. His mind was full of another thought. He looked again at Graham and did not see him. He started toward the door, turned and took three steps in the opposite direction, turned again.
He was pacing the floor.
Suddenly he spoke.
“Graham, how did you know I was here?”
“Um. That’s not a hard question. There was a story in the papers about a cow that had turned to bone—”
“What?”
“She turned to bone just like the little Boston bull in your steel box. I thought you might be somewhere near the place where that happened—”
Featherstone had stopped listening. He was pacing the floor again.
“Graham, are you telling the truth?”
“I saw that same story,” Mildred Chambers whispered. “That was how I traced him too.”
Graham said nothing.
Featherstone abruptly sat down. He looked at Mildred Chambers.
“You may believe me or not, as you choose, but until you told me, I knew nothing of the death of your father.”
Graham took a deep breath. He slipped the pistol back into his pocket. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said.
“You may well be afraid,” Featherstone answered.
“You can’t control your devils,” Graham said.
“I can’t control them,” Featherstone admitted.
* * * *
“I am an extortionist. I am a faker, I am a charlatan, I am a crook. But I am not a murderer, no!”
“I believe you gave Whitman Chambers the impression that unless he paid off, his daughter—”
“Gave him the impression, yes,” Featherstone interrupted. “I have admitted extortion. But if Chambers had laughed at me, I would have sought out some other wealthy person to scare money out of. That was the purpose of my weekly séances. I had no intention of carrying my threats.”
He shook his head. “Terror, not murder, is my business. No one ever succeeds in washing the stain of blood off his hands. I did not kill Whitman Chambers.”
“You admit that the—for lack of a better word I must say the devil over which you have—or had—at least partial control could have been used to kill him,” Graham said.
“Lord, yes!” Featherstone shivered. “I admit that I could—and possibly still can—use it to kill anyone anywhere. But, except for animals, I did not use it for that purpose.”
“You did not send one of them to kill Wakely’s cow?” Graham questioned.
“I did not,” Featherstone answered promptly. He turned his black eyes on Graham. “How did you know there was more than one of them?”
“I looked inside the building at the foot of the hill,” Graham answered.
“You did!”
“Yes.”
“And you’re still alive!” The words were spoken in a wondering whisper.
Featherstone looked at Graham, then looked away. His forehead creased in thought.
“I don’t understand that,” he said.
“You mean you don’t understand why I’m still alive?” Graham questioned.
“That’s right. Surely the draal was aware of you, even before you opened the door—”
He came over to Graham, looked wonderingly at him, reached out a hand and touched the private investigator. When he spoke, he seemed to be talking to himself.
“Was the draal asleep? No, that’s not possible. I don’t think it ever sleeps. Then why didn’t it know you were outside the building and why didn’t it kill you?”
“Eh?” Graham said. The thousand feet of naked fear walked over his skin.
“You should never have been able to approach within a hundred yards of that building. You should never under any circumstances have been able to open that door.”
Featherstone spoke like a man in a trance.
“You opened that door and you’re alive,” he continued. “I wonder—I wonder if the draal knew you were there, but did not want to kill you until you were somewhere else? I wonder why you’re still alive? Tell me, did something follow you away from the building, did something follow you up here?”
“Something like what?”
“Something that sang like a big bee when it moved.”
Graham shuddered. “Not that I was aware of,” he answered.
“Then I don’t b
egin to understand it,” Featherstone said.
“Why don’t you let someone help you understand?” Graham suggested.
Featherstone’s black eyes centered on him. Graham wondered when this enigmatical crook, this self-confessed extortionist and faker, was going to talk. Featherstone had admitted extortion but extortion was only a small part of a much bigger story. When was Featherstone going to reveal the whole story?
When was he going to tell what those five glinting creatures playing in the spray of violet light were?
* * * *
The story belonged to Featherstone. He could reveal it or keep it to himself, as he chose. Neither force nor threats would move him.
Graham was desperately eager to know the whole story. The fact that his life might depend on his knowledge was not the only reason he wanted to know. All his life he had been trying to lift the veil from the face of truth, to glimpse if only for a moment something of the dark reality of the universe. Featherstone had discovered something. Graham wanted to know what it was.
“What for instance, is the draal?” he questioned.
He kept the tone of his voice calm, he kept his words matter of fact. He was trying to nudge Featherstone into talking.
Featherstone was in mental turmoil and Graham knew it. Every action of the man indicated an intense mental conflict going on within his mind. He looked like a man in a trance. He had shuddered away from the suggestion of murder, yet he must know that he was at least partly responsible for the death of Whitman Chambers. This was one cause of the conflict in his mind. He had admitted extortion, he had admitted he was a crook, a faker. A man who will make such admissions is trying to make up his mind to admit even more. Graham was trying to help him make up his mind.
There was silence. Louie had sat down and was nervously smoking a cigarette. Mildred Chambers watched, her face tense with unexpressed fear. Far off in the night a car honked. Off there somewhere in the darkness somebody was driving a car along a road, somebody who had never heard of a draal, who had never seen five weird incredible devils playing in a spray of violet light.
“I’m trying to help you,” Graham gently said. “I think you have discovered something that turned out to be bigger than you thought. I’m trying to help you get out of the hole you’re in.”
The Alien MEGAPACK® Page 23