'Thank you, Colonel Verney. I don't expect you will hear any more of me for quite a time; but when you do, I only hope it will be on the first count and not the last. You've been very kind, and at least I can promise not to call for your help without good reason.'
Five minutes later he let her out of the side door into the narrow alley that ran between the studio and the garden of the house next door. As he watched her, a trim figure, head held high, walking with firm step swiftly away, he wished more than ever that he had been able to dissuade her from entering on this dangerous undertaking, or at least to give her some protection.
Back in his armchair he pondered for a long while whether he should pass on to Barney Sullivan what she had told him, inform him of her intentions, and tell him to co-operate with her. But, each working on his own, neither could bring the other into danger, and they provided two sources through either of which he might learn the truth about the murder of Teddy Morden; whereas, if they were associated, should one become suspect, the other would also. So he decided against letting Barney know anything about Mary's proposed activities.
It was a decision that he was to look back on later with bitter regret.
3. A scientist becomes queer
It was three weeks later - to be exact, late in the afternoon on Monday, April 4th - that Colonel Verney received a visit from Squadron Leader Forsby. They were old friends as they had worked together during the war, and afterwards Forsby had been seconded to special Security duties. For the past two years he had been responsible for security at the Long Range Rocket Experimental Establishment, which was situated on a lonely stretch of coast down in Wales.
The Squadron Leader was a small, grey-haired man with a kindly face and a deceptively meek manner, for he could be extremely tough when the necessity arose. As he set down his briefcase and took a chair, Verney said: 'Glad to see you, Dick. What sort of trouble has brought you up to the great big wicked city?'
'It's a funny one, C.B.,' the little man replied. 'May be nothing in it, maybe a lot. One of my science babies has gone a bit queer.'
'I thought they were all slightly nuts, anyhow.'
Forsby smiled. 'They're a special breed and live in a different world from us. Ethically many of them are quite irresponsible; but this is a bit out of series.'
'Don't tell me we've got another Nunn May or Fuchs on our hands!'
'I hope not, but he just might be. His name is Otto Khune. He's of German extraction but born American, in Chicago. In 1945 he married an English wife. She was a young Wren signals officer, and they met while she was doing a tour of duty at one of naval repair bases that we set up in the U.S. during the war. Evidently she didn't fancy the idea of living in the States, as they both came to England in 1946, and he took British nationality. As he had already been working for the Yanks on Rocket projects, and was fully vouched for, he was given a job by the Ministry of Supply; but the marriage didn't last. His wife divorced him in 1951. His speciality is fuels, and for the past eighteen months he has been top man in that line at the Station.'
'What's he been up to?'
'Nothing. It is simply that his colleagues are worried about his mental state. They all have their own quarters, of course, but the unattached ones feed and spend a good part of their leisure hours in a mess. For some weeks past Khune's behaviour there, particularly when it is getting late at night, has puzzled the others. They say that for short periods he talks and behaves as though he were an entirely different person. Did you happen to read that book The Three Faces of Eve?'
C B. shook his head. 'No, but I heard several people talk about it. I gather it was a report by two professional psychiatrists on an American woman who suffered from split personality.'
'That's right. I found it absolutely fascinating. Normally she was a prudish, dowdy little housewife with a shy, retiring nature, but at times she changed into a gay, bawdy-minded, come-hither girl, bought herself expensive clothes, made herself up fit to kill and went out to hit up the night spots. Then a third individuality emerged when she appeared to be a grave, sensible, responsible woman. And these changes in personality took place not once, but many times actually under the eyes of the men who were examining her; so one can hardly write the whole thing off as a hoax.'
'No, schizophrenia is a mental state now fully accepted by the medical profession. If that's the trouble with this chap Khune, I take it your worry is that while dominated by this new personality ho may commit some breach of security?'
'Exactly. When in his normal state we have every reason to believe him to be a patriotic naturalized Briton, but when he has these queer fits he appears to be anything but that. The sort of thing he says is that the only hope for the world is a new deal, starting with the elimination of all the old Imperialist and Capitalist governments; that the United States' oil interests and big business are at the bottom of all the ills that are afflicting mankind, and that true freedom for the individual can only be achieved by complete equality for all.'
'That sounds like the old Communist gags. Do you think he is being got at by the Russians?'
'Maybe, but somehow I don't think it's that. His ideas seem to be more on the old anarchist lines—the complete abolition of all rule with everyone muddling along in little share-and-share alike communities. Anyhow, as he was away this weekend, I decided, on the off-chance that he is in communication with some no-goods and that I might find something that would throw light on the matter, to search his quarters.' Forsby opened his brief-case and taking from it a typescript, added: 'There was nothing of any interest among his correspondence, but in his desk I found a document in his writing, and this is a copy that I took of it.'
Verney put on his spectacles, spread out the paper and read:
I, Otto Helmuth Khune, am making this statement of my free will and while of sound mind in case anything should happen to me, or my sanity later be questioned.
I was born in Chicago on February 8th, 1918, of naturalized American parents who had immigrated from Germany in 1910. They had had six children before the birth of myself and my brother Lothar, we two being my mother's third set of twins. Of the others, three died in infancy, or early childhood, and neither pair of twins was identical, whereas Lothar and I were.
We were the last children born to my parents and the three earlier ones who survived were all girls. One met her death in afire in 1933, the two others married and live in Detroit and Philadelphia respectively. It is now nearly fifteen years since I have seen either of them and neither plays any part in the matter of which I am about to give an account. Both my parents are now dead.
When I state that Lothar and I are identical twins, I mean that literally. Our physical resemblance was so exact that even people who knew us intimately, at times mistook one of us for the other. Mentally, too, we were extraordinarily alike. We had the same tastes in food, recreations and clothes, and almost invariably shared our likes or dislikes of people. As we grew into our 'teens the latter trait began to show some divergence, but mentally we continued to be remarkably attuned.
Neither of us had any difficulty in reading the other's thoughts and frequently we started to say the same thing at the same moment, so that the similarity of our minds became a joke among our acquaintances. The bond was still closer than that for, if one of us felt ill, the other invariably was, almost at once, subject to the same symptoms. This even extended to the demonstrably physical. On one occasion in a fight at school I had my eye blacked; Lothar felt the blow and soon after his eye also closed and coloured up. On another he fell and broke his ankle, upon which I suffered such acute pain in mine that I had to have the same treatment for such a mishap.
Another thing that we had in common was a highly developed psychic sense. It is said that the seventh child of a seventh child is often endowed in this way; and Lothar and I stood in this relation in my mother, who had been a seventh child. She, too, was psychic to some degree. To a limited extent she could see things in a crystal and tell fortunes by
cards, and she had had several death warnings that proved true foreknowledge of the event. But her psychic faculties were not so highly developed as those of Lothar and myself.
We could assess people's characters by the colour of the auras around their heads, which are invisible to the great majority of persons, but were perfectly visible to us. We had hunches about matters which would affect ourselves that invariably proved correct, and could often foretell good or ill fortune that would come to our friends.
We could 'see' things. Our first experience of this was when we were quite young, and was the spirit-form of a dog with which we used to play, without thinking there was anything strange about it, in our bedroom at night. Later we saw several ghosts, and for that reason neither of us would ever pass a cemetery after dark, although in due course we found out that ghosts are more generally pathetic than malignant.
These psychic faculties came to us quite naturally. When young we accepted them as normal and made no special effort to develop them, except in one particular; this was the ability to hypnotize. Both of us possessed it, but Lothar in a much greater degree than myself; perhaps because from the beginning he used to practise on me. To incite me to do ordinary things in this way was, of course, easy, because without any special effort he was able to convey to me his thoughts. But the test of his powers came when he willed me to do things that I was naturally averse to doing. Often he failed, but he was extraordinarily persistent and gradually he gained an ascendancy over me in all things except matters about which I felt particularly strongly.
Lothar and I were both clever and ambitious. We did well at school and later secured degrees with honours in maths and chemistry at the University of Chicago. Our father had been a young professor of mathematics at Leipzig before he decided to emigrate, and afterwards held a post as a senior examiner in the employ of the Chicago Schools Board. In our early days we owed a lot to his private tuition but in due course we entered fields which were beyond his sphere, and after we had taken our finals promising careers were open to both of us.
I secured a well-paid appointment with Weltwerk Schonheim Inc., the big industrial chemists, but Lothar, to most people's surprise - as such posts are not well paid - accepted a junior professorship at the University. His reason for doing so was, however, no secret from me. Beyond all things he loved power; and whereas had he gone into industry he would, for some years at least, have had to knuckle under to his seniors, by becoming a professor he at once achieved a position in which he was able to dominate and mould the minds of a group of mostly intelligent young people.
In the mid-1930s, while still in our 'teens, we had both become members of the Youth Corps of the Deutscher Bund, which was particularly strong in Chicago and was then rapidly expanding there, owing to the vigorous activities of a group of pro-Nazis. Lothar rapidly became prominent among them and by the time the war broke out in Europe, our age then being twenty-one, he was recognized as one of its leaders!
Naturally our sympathies were with Germany, but Lothar felt much more strongly on the matter than I did. He threw himself into a campaign aimed at giving Germany all the help that was possible; whereas my attitude was isolationist, and I maintained that as American citizens we ought to use such influence as we possessed to keep the United States strictly neutral.
In America the repercussions of Pearl Harbour were terrific. Isolationism disappeared overnight and almost to a man the people were behind the Government in its declaration of war on Japan. But in Chicago opinion was far from being so unanimous about the U.S. also entering the war against Germany. On this, for the first time in our lives, Lothar and I not only differed fundamentally, but quarrelled violently. I held that, although it might be distasteful to us, our duty lay in loyalty to the United States and, if need be, we must fight for the country in which we had been born and reared and under whose just laws we had been enabled to earn an honourable living. He held that blood counted for more than the accident of being born outside Germany, that in the triumph of the Nazi ideology lay the only cure for the decadence which infested the great democracies, and that it would be shameful to cling to our easy way of life instead of doing our utmost to help Hitler in his struggle. In short, the United States having declared war on Germany, he declared himself to be personally at war with the United States.
Of course, he was not such a fool as to say so openly, but he obtained exemption from continuing his lectures at the University on the excuse that he intended to join the U.S. Air Force, and shortly afterwards disappeared from Chicago.
The telepathic tie that united us kept me to some extent informed about him as, from time to time when I happened to think of him, I had visual images of his surroundings and people he was with. I felt certain that he had gone to South America and from there, via North Africa and Italy, succeeded in reaching Germany.
Then I saw him working on graphs and scientific data in one of many cubicles that formed a concrete warren underground. One night when I had just got off to sleep, I woke with a start to find myself actually with him. At least that is what it seemed like. He, or I, for I suddenly realized that my ego had got into his body, was lying flat on the ground in pitch darkness. But the darkness lasted only a second, then I was aware of a hideous din and blinding flashes momentarily lighting up the scene all round. I knew then that I was in the middle of an appalling air-raid and that he had been knocked out by blast. The flashes showed a flat countryside, broken only by some groups of hutments and several long mounds with concrete entrances. I was absolutely terrified, but I picked myself up, ran like a hare for the nearest bunker and threw myself inside. In my panic I tripped, went head over heels down the steep stairs and knocked myself out at the bottom.
When I came to I was back in bed in Chicago, feeling like death and with frightful bruises on my head and body. Next day I heard over the radio about the great air-raid on the German Research Works at Peenemünde, and I had no doubt at all that it was there that I had been. I can only imagine that in the instant Lothar passed out he sent a spiritual SOS to me, and that on finding his body empty I entered and saved it.
On another night during the final phase of the war, Lothar called me to him. By then, of course, I had long-since realized that he was one of the scientists working on Long Range Rockets, as at times I had had brief visions of him both at work and taking his pleasure with several different German girls who had jobs at the Establishment. Owing to his hypnotic powers, few women could resist him; but his mind was always too much occupied with serious matters for him to become a slave to that sort of thing, and it has no bearing on what followed.
I think it was again fear that had caused him to call for me, but there was nothing I could have done to help him on this occasion, for he was fully conscious and I remained only an invisible presence by his side, sharing his desperate anxiety. The Russians had just surrounded the Station and entered it, and he was terrified that they would shoot him. But they didn't. They marched him off with a number of other scientists to a railway siding and they were all locked into cattle-trucks.
This experience had no more immediate effect on me than others when I had had mental pictures of Lothar in all sorts of situations, pleasant and unpleasant; but during the next few weeks I became unaccountably ill and suffered from bouts of acute depression. Normal grounds for depression I had none. On the contrary, I had every reason to be extremely happy as, only a few months earlier, I had married Dinah Charnwell, a lovely English girl with whom I was passionately in love, and I had no financial or other worries. The reason for my wretched state was undoubtedly, my picking up Lothar's vibrations while, half-starved and desperately uncertain about his future, he was being transported as a prisoner by slow stages into Russia.
By midsummer I began to recover. Subconsciously I was aware that he was receiving better treatment, and not long afterwards, in a dream in which we met, he told me that he had become completely reconciled to putting his knowledge and abilities at the service of the Soviet U
nion.
I should make it plain that during all this time neither I, my family, nor anyone else with whom we were acquainted had heard from Lothar direct, or through any other source. Yet, when I did meet him again, on his coming to London in 1950, he confirmed that all I had learned of his activities through our psychic tie-up was substantially correct, and I found that in a like manner he had followed the general outline of what had been happening to me.
Of that visit of his to London I will postpone writing for the time being, as I am too tired to write much more for the moment. In due course I will include an account of it in a further passage of this document, since I intend to continue it as a record of the mental disturbances with which I have recently become afflicted. I will confine myself now to stating that I feel certain that Lothar is again in England, and that for some sinister purpose of his own he is endeavouring to dominate my mentality. But I will not allow him to succeed. I will not.
'Extraordinary story,' C.B. commented as he laid the document down. 'D'you think there's any truth in it, or that he's just got bats in the belfry?'
'It's true as far as I've been able to check up,' replied Forsby. 'I looked in at the Ministry of Supply before coming here and got them to show me the confidential report that was compiled on Khune when he applied to be taken on for the sort of hush-hush work he's still doing. Most of it was from American sources. It confirms what he says of his family and early life in Chicago, and that he had an identical twin named Lothar. It also confirms that Lothar disappeared from Chicago early in 1942, and states that as he was known to be a rabid Nazi it was suspected that he had left the U.S. with the intention of joining the enemy. The close association of the twins up to that time led the F.B.I. to keep our man under careful observation for a while, but they satisfied themselves that he and his family had lost touch with Lothar; so he was written off as a security risk and O.K'd. for employment in a Government Research Establishment. By the time our Ministry of Supply came into the picture he was married to an English girl, had taken British nationality, and the war with Germany was over; so, without hesitation, he was accepted for secret work.'
The Satanist Page 4