by Philip Wylie
A Bureau for Propaganda similar to that which existed during the European War was immediately created and its first functions were to arouse public opinion to support the existing government and to furnish data for the apprehension of the general enemy. Then, for two days, nothing happened.
It was at that time that Baxter, with no less an intention than to see the President himself, boarded a train for Washington. He was in disguise. He carried a battery of credentials which would have assured his admisson to the President at once in normal circumstances. Nevertheless he was forced to wait for twelve hours for his audience and the precautions surrounding his visit to the Highest Authority included a complete change of clothes in the presence of Secret Service agents and an X-ray examination.
Six men remained in the room with the President during the interview. The President had lost much of his usual aplomb. His face was seamed and his gestures those of a man mortally fatigued. Baxter came into the room serenely. He had slept, shaved, concentrated his every faculty toward this final effort.
The President said, “How do you do, Mr. Baxter?” and held out his hand.
Baxter took a chair at the side of the President’s desk. He began to speak at once, choosing his words with care and giving them the emphasis of a slow intensity.
“You are already acquainted with the matter in connection with which I have come to see you.”
“I am.”
“Then you will understand that my approach is in the nature of a last resort. I have previously attempted to convey my knowledge to the Police Commissioner in New York. I failed. In fact, I was incarcerated. Subsequently I did communicate my information to a few chosen friends but their reaction was to swear an immediate silence about the whole affair and to determine that any action should be taken by them as individuals. It is unnecessary to add that their action has been futile.”
“To the point, then, Mr. Baxter.”
“I hesitate to make my point. Once I was arrested for mentioning it. Once my efforts resulted in at best a limited spreading of the facts. It is absolutely necessary to prepare you in this manner for what I have to say. It is essential that my credentials and the result of the investigations of me made by your agents convince you personally of my sanity and my reliability.”
“I am convinced, Mr. Baxter. This country has all too few citizens like yourself.”
“Thank you, Mr. President. Very well, then. Let me say in further preface that I know who is at the bottom of this social catastrophe which is sweeping the country. I know his name, his origin, his purpose.”
“His, Mr. Baxter?”
“His. It is one man.”
“Incredible.”
“To what I have said I may add that I know precisely how he accomplished his prodigious plans. He is a scientist. I myself am a scientist. At the risk of my own security, I may add that I personally was in the employ of this man until a bare two weeks ago and that I unwittingly assisted in the preparation of this—this public disaster.”
“I am frankly incredulous, Mr. Baxter.”
The younger man took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped perspiration from his brow and lips. “I feared you would be. In that case, I have no more to say.”
He rose. The President ignored his outstretched hand. His forehead was puckered, his eyes met Baxter’s with a profound scrutiny. At last he sighed.
“Sit down, Mr. Baxter. Go ahead. I apologize.”
Baxter re-seated himself.
“This is all the work of a man named William Carpenter.”
The President interrupted him. “Familiar name.”
“Yes, indeed. Two or three years ago he was one of the largest operators in Wall Street. He is also a bio-chemist of remarkable attainments. Wall Street ruined him—or partially ruined him. He was determined on revenge. He has a paranoical megalomania and the impractical idealism of a communistic fanatic. He determined not only upon revenge but also to force himself as dictator upon the entire world. I venture to compare that aspiration with the ideas of a Napoleon or an Alexander. Carpenter, however, took a most extraordinary method of fitting himself for the attainment of his desires. A shocking method. A wholly incredible method, Mr. President.”
“I am waiting, Mr. Baxter.”
Baxter drew a long, tremulous breath and answered in words scarcely above a whisper.
“He made himself invisible to the human eye.”
The President did not reply at once. He picked up a paper knife that was lying on his desk and tapped lightly against the glass surface. He pulled his lower lip over the upper. Twice he glanced at Baxter—quick turns of the head that punctuated long searchings of the space before him.
“Tell me more about this Carpenter.”
Half an hour later Baxter finished the third complete recital of his adventures in Sinkak and those which had followed. The President had spoken no word. His face had shown his reactions to Baxter’s story—his interest in the brief synopsis of the chemistry that was offered to him—his consideration of the various details that might be checked at a later time.
“That,” Baxter finished, “is a complete summary of what I know.”
For an instant the Chief Executive smiled. “I wish,” he said, “that I had you here in Washington.”
Baxter mopped his face again. “Then——”
“I am very grateful to you. I believe you implicitly.”
“Thank God.”
“This Carpenter,” the President mused, “is like a man who can see, moving in a city where every one else is blind.”
“Exactly.”
“While we remain blind, we are all equally at his mercy.”
“We are.”
“That, Mr. Baxter, gives him a very great weapon. Very great. In fact, I doubt that many men are capable of perceiving that invisibility would be possible to a human being—let alone of imagining the gigantic uses to which it could be put.”
He stood up.
“When the crisis is passed, I shall see that you are suitably honored. Meanwhile, may I count on your cooperation?”
“Certainly.” Baxter gave his address to one of the aides in the room.
“I shall ask you later to-day to repeat what you have told me when the proper persons are summoned. I believe that for the present this matter must be kept inviolate. Publication of the facts would not only warn Carpenter—but it would stimulate the people to such a pitch of terror that they might get beyond control.” The President wrung Baxter’s hand. “To express my own gratitude at this moment, Mr. Baxter, would be impossible. Colonel Diggs—will you please escort Mr. Baxter to his hotel? Mr. Baxter—Colonel Diggs.”
One of the men in the room stepped forward and joined Baxter. Together they walked down the steps of the White House. A car was waiting for them.
Once inside it, the President’s aide grasped Baxter’s hand. “Man, that was magnificent!”
“It was merely by chance, Colonel, that I was connected with the business at all.”
“But you’ve turned the whole trick!”
“Not exactly. I’ve informed the President of the facts. I gave him no ready solution.”
“Nevertheless—once the facts are known—the rest is easy.”
Baxter shook his head. “Don’t be misled. I’m a trained scientist. I’ve always been secretly proud of my ability to act in tight places and of my reasoning power. Yet I have not the faintest theory that offers hope to Carpenter’s pursuers. Can you think of any?”
The Colonel frowned. “No. To tell the truth I can’t. Not off-hand, anyway.”
Baxter declined an invitation to lunch with Colonel Diggs. He left the car at the entrance to the hotel and went into the lobby. The desk clerk looked at him curiously—Baxter’s appearance had changed since he had left the hotel—but he produced the key to Baxter’s room.
“Are you Mr. Baxter?”
“Yes.”
“Curious. I had the impression of another person. Old man. Wh
iskery. Anyway—there is a call in for you from New York.”
“Thank you. I’ll take it in my room.”
Baxter could not be sure who was calling him. Some of the men, possibly, who were working on the problem of locating Carpenter and who had obtained his Washington number from Quail.
He waited, sitting on his bed. When the phone rang it was the voice of Quail himself that greeted him.
“Hello! Baxter old man!”
“Hello! Howie?”
“Yes. For God’s sake come home!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Daryl’s gone!”
“What!”
“Gone! Kidnapped! I think it was he——”
Baxter dropped the telephone to the floor. On the way down in an elevator he counted the money in his wallet. He hailed a cab. He ordered the driver to rush him to the flying field. Half an hour later he was looking down at the needle of Washington’s monument, at the green park, at the black ruins where the Capitol had stood. His eyes saw none of them. His eyes were black, demoniac, dreadful.
CHAPTER 8
DARYL DISAPPEARS
Two weeks had made a tremendous change in Carpenter which could not be perceived only because of his unique and intrinsic condition. As he had once himself imagined, it would have been strange to see him. He walked through the streets of New York with great strides. He held his head high. Already it was his empire.
He could stop in the thoroughfares at any point and stare up at the tall buildings, knowing that he could bring them crashing into dust with impunity for himself. His hand was the scepter of life and death over any man or woman who passed him—over any person on whom he saw fit to wreak destruction.
In the deserted house on Long Island were still great quantities of the explosive he had used in his “testimonial sample” which the elderly and begoggled Mr. Williams could easily transport to 95 George Street—or to any other place. The explosive, allied to trinitrotoluene and considerably more effective, was one of Carpenter’s minor laboratory achievements. It was a small quantity of that substance which had destroyed the Mortland farm house at Sinkak.
Carpenter had progressed so far in two weeks that he had considered the resultant pandemonium a sufficiently fertile soil for the sowing of his first message to the world. On the momentous Tuesday he had waited in Washington for the news. The early issues of the Globe bore his threat with the caption “Hoax?” He was unable to understand that in the face of the furore in progress around the ruins of the Capitol. Enlightenment came presently, however, with later issues of the New York Globe.
Telephone communication in New York was uncertain and whole exchanges had been wiped out. The trains ran on irregular schedules and many of the tracks in Grand Central Station were still under repair following one of his charges. The burst water main in up town New York was under control, although Manhattanites were still boiling their drinking water and husbanding the available supply. The fires he had set were all extinguished. Other power houses had taken up most of the load of those he had destroyed.
Most of the news during the later part of the week of his reign of terror had been disseminated by radio—as hundreds of thousands of people kept to their houses, and food was distributed to many localities by the State Militia. The Red Cross had provided amply for the victims of his various forms of frightfulness.
His statement in the newspapers had one immediate effect. It informed the rest of the nation—perhaps most by the razing of the Capitol which it, in point of time, had certainly predicted—of the general menace of his program. A slighting or hostile attitude was no longer taken toward New York’s predicament. Help of every sort and from every side poured into the city.
Within two days of the appearance of that incredible threat to the people of the whole world, every one who walked abroad by day or by night was challenged. An elaborate sentry system was set up. After a ten o’clock curfew no one was allowed on the streets and police and soldiery were instructed to shoot at the first evidence of any abnormality. This effectually quelled the mass of minor crimes which had followed in Carpenter’s mighty train. Street robberies, stabbings, holdups and the multifarious activities of innumerable ordinary gangsters and, gunmen which had been launched under the cover of the graver tribulation were put to an end.
A census was made of every district in the city and every house was searched. Business, under military authority, consisted of supplying necessities to the civilians.
Carpenter had actually been in his residence at 95 George Street while the searchers were there. The dusty furniture and the mouldered closets of the first two floors, together with the local reputation of the house, convinced the party that it was unoccupied. An absolute thoroughness could not be expected; nevertheless during the period when it was threatened, Carpenter had dismantled his room and obliterated every trace of himself and his occupancy.
Most of his time had been spent unclad in the various pursuits which came to his mind in rapid succession and which were performed in the order of their rising effect on public morale. A day or two had taught him how to manage himself and the materials which it was necessary for him to move.
He had spent hours in searching the plans of New York which were available at City Hall, mentally noting down each crucial and accessible point of attack. It was thus that he had been able to strike such telling blows at the heart of the utilities.
He had also, during the first few days, listened to the conferences in various banking houses which dealt with the steps that would be taken in the market. Armed with that knowledge and operating through his brokers he had taken advantage of the various maneuvers and thereby built up almost overnight an immense fortune for “Mr. Williams.” Mr. Wesson had become so dismayed by his client’s foreknowledge that he was on the verge of betraying him when the market was closed and stock trading indefinitely suspended. He had not, as yet, seen the war-scarred “Mr. Williams” face to face. Nor had he supplied “Mr. Williams” with any of his huge profits—they remained untouched in his vaults—stacks of securities, bundles of currency. Mr. Wesson was relieved of the pressure of the Charybdis of a suspicion he would not admit and a Scylla of public duty by the shutting down of the market and the consequent inactivity of his conservative house.
He remained tranquilly in his suburban abode during the uproar in the city and wondered occasionally just how rich his client had become in the past days of hectic manipulations.
One other pursuit had occupied Carpenter beside his attack, his spying, his perusal of city plans, and his stock transactions: the business of keeping an occasional check on Daryl and Baxter. He had determined to do away with Baxter when the opportunity presented itself but he had been so immensely busy that the actual deed had been impossible.
The day after Daryl left her room Carpenter found that she had gone. He waited for some time for her return and profited by a mistake she made—that of sending for some of her clothes. The messenger who called for the garments was duly accredited at the desk, collected the things desired, and went to Quail’s house with Carpenter so close at his heels that he could have been touched by invisible fingers at any time.
Daryl had thought it was ingenious to send a messenger. It would have been effective if Carpenter had not been so fortunate as to have been in the hall of the Clariena at the time of his arrival. Afterward, thinking it over and remembering Baxter’s plan to let both their rooms at the hotel go undisturbed—to let the bill be presented at his club—to act as if they were not connected with the place at all, Daryl was somewhat perturbed by her act.
In any case, she saw very little of Baxter from that time on. Quail never spoke to her about the clothes she had received although he must have guessed at the manner of their transportation to his home, and nothing happened. For the sake of a very pardonable vanity, a laudable economy, and to save her from the embarrassment of increasing her debt to her host and hostess she had taken what she considered a small risk.
&n
bsp; She could not know that Carpenter had trailed the messenger to the house, followed the packages inside, stood silently in the room while he listened to enough conversation to assure him that Baxter was not there, would not be there, and that Daryl expected to remain. With that knowledge, he left the house and commenced his siege of crime.
He did what he could to rationalize the fact that Baxter was still alive, nevertheless the possibilities of Baxter’s continued existence were thorns that pricked him on some occasions and on others, possibly by virtue of the rationalization, Carpenter imagined that his erstwhile assistant could do no harm to him.
The entire truth was, that aside from certain plans and a fairly careful and intelligent geographical arrangement of the properties that were destined to serve him after he became invisible, Carpenter had relied upon his native ingenuity to direct him. He had the house in New York for a bedroom and a place in which to change to the nebulous person of Mr. Williams. Under that name he had an established contact with a brokerage house and a wholesale chemist. He had the equipment in New York required for hiding, for escape, for transformation.
On the shore of Long Island he possessed Chrome Gables, the top floor of which was in good living condition, the cellar of which contained a laboratory which was not the replica of that in Sinkak but which was adequate for the uses he planned to make of it. At Chrome Gables he had a telephone connection with the outside world.
The facility with which he carried out his first purposes—and carried them farther than he had intended—had surprised him. It had been easier for the invisible Carpenter to murder those three men than it had been for the original Carpenter to get them on the telephone. The same thing applied in the case of Daryl and Baxter. Carpenter had feared that they might elude him after he had lost them on the terrible night of his transition. He found that it was simple to keep track of any individual. He could follow the person, the person’s belongings, his mail, or stand among the person’s friends until some supposedly private words gave a clue of his whereabouts.
Carpenter had vaguely planned to spend a month in righting the wrongs he had suffered. Two days were sufficient. He had intended to commence his attack of the Stock Market very gradually and to follow it later with an occasional and judicious dynamiting of public properties. Instead, he found almost immediately that, being invisible, the robbing of banks, the study of city plans, the transportation of objects, the devastation of wide areas could be accomplished simply in a short time and over wide areas.