by Don Wilcox
They ascended to the second floor, passed through a wing of newly decorated apartments, came to a stop near the middle of the building, where the plasterers’ equipment blocked the stairs. Patsy was almost certain the prisoner was in a third floor room.
To her surprise H.C. picked her up and lifted her over the barricade of plasterers’ supplies, and set her down on the third step.
“So we won’t leave any white tracks on the stairs,” he explained
They reached the top step. He drew her arm through his and they started down the line of rooms.
“I don’t think Mr. Craig is interested in any girls,” said Patsy. “And I don’t blame him, the way all of us sit around talking about him.”
“Oh, they do? What do they say?”
“What they say makes no difference to me,” said Patsy.
At the end of the corridor they turned back. They had glanced into each room not already occupied by tenants.
“I must be wrong,” Patsy said. “But I remember distinctly it was an empty room, with yellow walls and a crack in the plaster that looked like a falling palm tree. And there was one window.
“Facing the court or the street?”
“The court, I think. I was too mad to see straight. You see I had just waked up when we heard the men coming up the stairs.”
“Then the room must be near a stairway.”
H.C. led her back to the center of the building.
“We didn’t try this room,” said H.C., scrutinizing an obstructed doorway. “I’ll move a few of these window frames and we’ll see what’s back here.”
Patsy gave him a mocking smile. She thought he was being very impractical, and her patience and good behavior were wearing thin.
Wherever Hamilton Craig might be imprisoned, she felt sure it wouldn’t be behind a doorway that was blocked by half a ton of floor lumber and a couple dozen window frames. If she knew those two night watchmen, they weren’t the sort to relish work. And yet she was certain that they were obliged to drop in on their prisoner often enough to keep him from starving.
“Sap,” she said.
H.C. apparently didn’t like being called a sap by comparative strangers. But upon weighing her argument he decided to move no more window frames. He stepped down off the bundles of quarter-sawed oak.
However, the slight joggle of the whole stack of material fascinated him and he gazed back at it curiously.
“Are those frames bearing any weight against the wall or aren’t they?” he asked, squinting at the shadows. “We’ll answer that problem before we go on.”
“Do you divide or multiply?” said Patsy, sarcastically.
“And what about those bundles being a quarter inch off the floor?”
“They must be hypnotized. Are you looking for Hamilton Craig or aren’t you?”
H.C. didn’t answer. He was down on his hands and knees trying to see underneath the stack of material. He slipped his fingertips under the corner and pulled. The stack of material rolled away from the door without so much as the quiver of a window frame.
“I thought so,” he said, more to himself than to Patsy. “That whole caboodle of stuff is on casters. Well, this door should give us what we’re looking for.”
Patsy followed him into the wedge of space. He turned the knob and the door opened.
“We’ll leave the room light off,” he said. “There’ll be enough gleam through these window frames. And we’d better pull them back in place while we’re at it.”
“Yellow walls,” Patsy whispered, “with cracks like a falling tree. This must be the place.”
H.C. called into the darkness.
“Are you there, Ham Craig? This is your—your friend, H.C. We’ve come to get you, Patsy and I. Where—oh, here you are. They’ve knotted you up a bit . . . Patsy, a little more light. No, not the switch. Just open the door a little wider. That’s good. I’ll have these ropes cut in a minute.”
Patsy heard the relieved sigh of the prisoner. Once his gag was removed he was quick to come to life.
“Ah—whooie—that’s better. I’ve been looking forward to this . . . The other arm first, if you don’t mind. It’s still got some feeling. The left one’s numb . . . Is that Patsy with you, or am I seeing red?”
“It’s me,” said Patsy. “Nice little date we had. You sure threw me a swell party—like fun.”
“You did the throwing,” said Hamilton Craig, trying to loosen the rusty joints in his free arm. “The way you toss bricks you ought to have a job with a wrecking crew. You sure wrecked me.”
“There you go again,” Patsy said hotly. “I s’pose you’re going to tell H.C. it was all my fault.”
“You grazed me with that brick,” said Craig, dragging to his feet, “just as I was bearing down on those fiends for a knockout—”
“Listen to him rave, H.C.,” Patsy taunted. “Knockout? All right, my aim slipped and I spared ’em the trouble. We’re lucky they didn’t shoot us both.”
“I don’t deny that,” said Craig, lifting a foot out of ropes. “All I’m saying is, when you got careless with that brick—”
“You’d better not talk,” Patsy screeched. “A couple of hours ago you threw me out that window.”
“How could I throw you out when my hands were tied?” Craig growled. “You think I haven’t had plenty of trouble protecting you? Yesterday when you turned into a card and fell to the floor you practically signed your death warrant. If those suspicious guys had seen you they’d have thought you were an invisible message. They’d have torn you to bits. But I did some swift head-work. I rolled over and sat on you.”
“Headwork,” Patsy echoed. “I ought to slap you. How did you finally get me out the window?”
“Kicked you out—with both feet.”
“A fine time of night you chose.”
“I’d been trying all day. I knew you’d be half way down to earth before you started to gather weight, and you wouldn’t any more than break a leg. But I did expect you to heave a couple of bricks through my window for a thank you.”
“I didn’t know which window,” said Patsy. “Any more insults?”
Craig turned his conversation to the mysterious H.C.—a veritable double for the architect in height and voice and profile. H.C. was energetically massaging Craig’s arms and shoulders. In the dim yellow light that filtered into the room it was not easy to distinguish these two men. If anything, H.C. was slower of speech, more reserved, less disturbed by this gangster business that was operating on these premises.
But H.C.’s attitude was far from one of complacency. If anything, he was more in a mood for decisive action than Hamilton Craig, whose overwrought emotions could be seen in his exaggeration of trifles.
H.C. suggested to him that he drop his quarrel with Patsy; that there would be a time to review the scrap with the two night watchmen before a judge.
But Hamilton Craig, for some reason that didn’t make sense to Patsy, made another uncomplimentary remark about her brick-throwing ability and added injury to insult by warning H.C. that all these things should be considered carefully by any man contemplating matrimony.
Contemplating matrimony? What did that have to do with Patsy? In full fury she exploded.
Instead of turning to a card as any other Craigette would have done under this much stress, she stormed to the door like a cyclone. She thrust the stacked floor and window materials out of her way, dashed through, and gave the stuff a final push—such a vigorous one that the echoes of clattering window frames and lumber accompanied her all the way down the stairs.
She got back to the reception room several minutes ahead of Craig and H.C.—by chance just in time to answer a telephone call. Here it was one o’clock at night and some drunken dope was trying to locate Archie Burnette.
CHAPTER XXII
Early Morning Spree
Whiskey Phil hung up and turned to the bartender.
“ ‘Stoo bad. Archie ain’t in. Or if he was, zhey di’n’t wanta cal
l ’im.
Nice guy, thish Archie. You know ’im?”
The bartender nodded. He’d seen the fellow around.
“Well, you oughta git better ’quainted, like I did,” said Phil. “Let ’im sock ya in th’ jaw once. Thash how I got t’ know ’im. He shocked me inna jaw, jis’ like thish.”
Whiskey Phil threw a wide haymaker that unbalanced him and left him clinging to the bar at a forty-five degree angle. He crawled back onto the stool.
“I wuz gonna tell Archie all ’bout thish practical joke. Guess I’ll write ’im a letter. ’Stoo good to keep. Will yah give it to Archie? . . . Don’t get grabby . . . ain’t got no letter wrote yet. Gimme a peesha paper, will yah? Thassha boy.”
Whiskey Phil wrote painstakingly for the next thirty minutes, and then gave the bartender the letter and went on his way.
His way took him through the building into the court. He weaved in and out of the arcade. Each pillar he encountered with an attitude that it was a personal friend, and there would be a one-sided argument as to how he was to get past.
He stopped to mutter over the strangeness of the heap of electrical equipment which had been deposited on the walk preparatory to the lighting of this court. The rolls of wire failed to give him any back talk and he was disappointed. He kicked at them, then he took from his pocket a pair of pruning shears.
He snapped the shears but could not succeed in catching the end of the wire. Everything was falling away from him.
The pruning shears, however, gave him a secret delight. He was a practical joker, the most amusing person in the world. He staggered down the walk snapping the shears. When he came to the door which led to Marcus Drake’s basement he drew up with a deeply satisfied “Aha! Thish ish the playsh!”
The door was locked. This was annoying. Whiskey Phil tried several windows. But it was the door to Dr. Silverhead’s laboratory that admitted him. The lights were friendly and inviting, and for a moment he was almost swerved from his purpose.
The pruning shears were still snapping in his hands, and so he plodded through a dark room grumbling mildly as he bumped into sharp objects and at last located the basement stairs that led to Marcus Drake’s garden tools.
“Here she ish, hangin’ on thish nail. All r-right, Mishter Drake, well trade. You c’n have thish one—I’ll take yours for a shooveneer.”
Suiting the action to the word, Philip Parker stumbled away, patting the new prize with the palm of his hand.
Half way through the dark room he stopped to look back and laugh. He laughed until he needed a drink. There was a bottle in his left hip pocket, but the bottle and the souvenir pruning shears were too much to handle at once. The bottle dropped and shattered.
“Sssssh! Don’t be wakin’ nobody up. Thish mus’ be Mishter Drake’s night to shleep.”
The lights of Dr. Silverhead’s laboratory again beckoned him, and he decided it would be a good time to drop in for a social call. Maybe he would find Archie. He still wanted to tell Archie his little joke.
Dr. Silverhead was seated at a table peering into a microscope. He glanced up at the intruder without actually seeing him, and returned his eyes to his work. He was operating a wooden wheel as large as an automobile steering wheel, which caused the object beneath the microscope to creep slowly back and forth.
Whiskey Phil was in a wilderness of bright scientific paraphernalia, none of which he understood. But the focus of the lights around the table directed his attention to the eight-inch lens beneath the microscope. Phil tried to intrude upon the doctor’s concentration with a brisk “Good evenin’! Ish a nishe evenin’.” Three times he repeated his greeting. Then his sociability flagged and he sat down on a bench to mutter to himself.
A wave from the doctor silenced him, and for the next half hour he sat there watching. Abruptly Dr. Silverhead turned, removed his spectacles and stared at Whiskey Phil through feverishly bright eyes.
“Not a flaw in it. It is perfect.” The white-haired man rose and came over to Whiskey Phil with precise steps.
Whiskey Phil offered another greeting with his favorite comment on the nice evening, which the doctor ignored. It would seem that this was a moment of great achievement in the life of this scientist. A wealth of magnificent words was rolling off his tongue, and Phil sensed that they were an expression of exultation. He was fascinated by the wangling of the doctor’s sharp-pointed beard and he tried to nod his acceptance of all that was being said.
“But there’s this one possible error,” the doctor was saying. “The fifth figure beyond the decimal point was blurred. It was either a six or an eight. As the completed lens stands it is perfect—for the eight.”
“For the eight,” Whiskey Phil echoed, with a glimmer of understanding.
“Eight what?”
“I will put it into operation at once,” the doctor continued, “if it focusses successfully, the missing digit was an eight. If it fails, I shall resume the task of microscopic abrasions until the point of six is reached. Could anything be more logical?”
“Nothin’,” said Whiskey Phil. “It is the clearesh, mosh logical logic I ever heard. What yuh gonna do ’bout it?”
“Within a few minutes I will know,” said the doctor, consulting his watch. “One living subject will prove the point. I will have the lens inserted within five minutes. The crucial test will follow at once.”
“Thish . . . ish . . . gonna . . . be . . . good.”
The doctor started to put on his spectacles, but for an intense moment he gazed at Whiskey Phil, now very much aware of this visitor’s presence. “If you will just remain seated, sir, I shall be ready at once.”
“’s all right, I’m in no hurry. I’ve got all night.”
Whiskey Phil gestured with the pruning shears, but it occurred to him that they were best kept out of sight since they were such a valuable souvenir. He hid them away in his hip pocket.
A few minutes later he yielded to the doctor’s suggestion that he climb the ladder to the pinnacle of a towering instrument. It was a dizzy climb. This massive pyramid of gleaming black tubes, crackling with electric sparks, rose out of a gaping rectangular hole in the floor. It had its base on a lower level—a stage with wings full of tattered old scenery. As Whiskey Phil neared the top of the ladder, he fancied himself an actor. He was 18 or 20 feet above the top of the proscenium arch when he reached the summit of his climb.
He turned and called down to the doctor. “Di’n’t think I’d make it, did ya?”
“No time to waste, sir. The power is on full. Proceed as I instruct you. There is a slide before you. You are to enter it feet first.”
“Good ol’ slipper shlide. Ish jis’ like school dayzh.”
“Everything is ready,” the doctor ordered. “Proceed.”
The drunken man obediently hurled his weight into the metal chute. He gave a hilarious shout as he swished down into the mysterious pyramid out of sight.
Dr. Silverhead bounded down a stairway to the level of the stage. He pranced back and forth in front of two short “slipper slides” which extended out from the base of the pyramid.
For thirty seconds he watched those two chutes expectantly. Nothing came out. He waited a full minute, then nodded decisively and switched off the power.
“It should have been six,” he said to himself. “Two more days of grinding.”
CHAPTER XXIII
A Lesson for Linda Lee
“But disintegration isn’t at all complicated,” said Dr. Silverhead, as he unfolded a scientific chart for the benefit of his audience of one. That one—Linda Lee—was the perfect audience. She listened attentively, rolled her large childlike eyes in astonishment, and understood absolutely nothing.
“Only two nights ago I disintegrated one of my subjects completely,” the doctor continued. “The process requires less than twenty seconds. At the end of that time there is nothing left.”
“How remarkable,” said Linda Lee. “Did it hurt him?”
“Hurt is a
trifling thing. What is hurt? A state of mind—always temporary. Exceedingly temporary in his case. Does an operation hurt? A little, perhaps, but it is necessary if the patient is going to regain his health. And this hurt was necessary to make our desired gains in new realms of science. By this subject’s sacrifice I proved that my new lens was two-thousandths of a point off. But now I have rectified that error.”
“Oh!” Linda Lee gasped. “Does that mean he’ll be all right?”
“He no longer has any positive existence. The matter of which he was composed has been disintegrated. If you’ll notice the round dots on this chart—”
“They look like dollahs and nickels and pennies falling through the aih.” The doctor smiled.
“These dots represent the electrons which make up the atoms of matter of which all physical substance is composed. This larger dot—”
“Speaking of dollahs,” said Linda Lee, sliding off the subject of electrons, “what happened to this puhson’s money when you disamputated him? Did it come daown one of those big spaouts?”
“Those chutes are where I expected him to reappear after he slid down into the top of the machine. If my lens had been perfect he would have been duplicated. One of him would have emerged through each chute.”
“One of him?”
“This machine, once I have it functioning properly again, will make duplicates of anything, living or dead.”
“I worked in an office once,” said Linda Lee, “and we used carbon paper for duplicates.”
“This process is slightly more complicated. In the first place, all matter is largely space . . .”
In a room between the laboratory and the court Marcus M. Drake paused by the door. Dr. Silverhead’s conversation never interested him, but here was something new and strange in the doctor’s manner. Drake turned to his two henchmen, who were working with broom and dustpan, sweeping up a broken bottle.
“I’d like to know,” Drake snarled in an undertone, “which of you birds got him started drinking . . . Well, somebody must have done it. He never paid any attention to women before, but watch him go. You’d think she had him hypnotized into telling everything.”