The Murderer Invisible

by Philip Wylie

  Carpenter had frequently spied upon her during that time—in order, she supposed, to reduce her to a state in which it was not possible for her to tell when he was in the room and when he was not. He doubtless believed that if she were never sure of his presence it would reduce to nil any propensities toward escape which she might suddenly show.

  Hence he had on one occasion told her that he was going to work in the laboratory, opened the door, closed it, and under the cover of the back of a nearby chair pretended that he was turning the lock from the outside. In actual fact, he had remained in the room. Daryl had sensed that from a slight disturbance of the nap of the carpet. Nevertheless she gave him no indication that she knew he was not there and busied herself with small, innocent occupations—the reading of a magazine, the mending of a stocking, the rearrangement of the room, the washing of dishes. That had done much to satisfy him of the integrity of her pledges.

  Again, he had gone out without locking the door—seeming to forget the precaution. Daryl had found it open, known that he was watching her every move, gone into the hall boldly, walked down stairs, let herself into the yard, sat in the sun for an hour, and returned to the living room in the late afternoon only to tell him gaily of her exploit when he made his reappearance evident.

  Carpenter was unquestionably misled by such simple devices. His infatuation with her made his misconstruction easier. His vanity was a second force in the process: believing she cared about him, he could not believe that he was being deceived. He placed too much confidence in the superiority over time and space lent to him by the condition of invisibility.

  Her defense against his importunate advances remained rigid. She put him off by the self-evident expression of a wish to accustom herself to his peculiar state.

  On the morning of the fourth day of their life in Chrome Gables, Carpenter’s lamb-like docility was somewhat aberrated by preoccupation. The avenging angel of mankind’s foibles brewed the coffee thoughtfully and concocted a minor ruse to apply to his ladylove. When he summoned her, he laid the foundation of that ruse.

  She sat on the divan beside the center table, he on a leather chair—his spoonful of coffee delicately outlining his esophagus and stomach in mid-air. She was no longer unspeakably horrified at this phenomenon of the slow appearance of his internal organs and their similarly slow re-engulfment by space. She ignored it, held back the signs of revulsions, and drank her own coffee quietly.

  “I’m going to work down stairs this morning, dear.”

  “Very well.”

  “This marks the end of the period I allowed for an answer.”

  Daryl remembered. “Yes!”

  “You’ve been able to see clearly by the papers I’ve brought to you that no governmental progress toward a decision has been made.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well—that’s all. I’ve sent a second ultimatum. Now I must get ready in my laboratory to back it up.”

  “You aren’t going to kill any more people——”

  “Don’t be weak. If necessary—I’ll kill ten millions.”

  She sighed. “Couldn’t you—with all your mentality—think of some way to avoid that?”

  “Why?”

  “Well—I suppose—people like to live. And if you could do it peacefully——”

  Carpenter’s voice rumbled with annoyance. “How many times have I explained to you that I am not a murderer? These deaths are not murder any more than the deaths caused on a battle-field are murder.”

  “I know—but—I suppose I’m old-fashioned—when I think of soldiers dying—that seems gallant. But when I think of innocent and unprepared women and children—then—it’s different.”

  “Bosh! Pap. And you know it. They’re not innocent. They’re demons—every one. Diseased, sick, weak, flabby, lying, mean, cheating, hypocritical, stubbornly stupid, self-aggrandizing, unwilling, dishonorable travesties of men and women and children. I’ll kill a mountain of them as high as Everest if necessary. I’m going.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “No kiss for me yet?”

  “Not yet. Maybe soon——”

  Carpenter’s voice showed a new urgency—an emotion undoubtedly prompted by the knowledge that he was returning to the feverish campaign in the city.

  “I cannot wait forever, Daryl. And some say that love needs a measure of brutality for stimulation——”

  She tried to be scornful. “Not our kind!”

  “Is it so different?”

  “I thought——”

  The door opened.

  “We’ll hear what you thought later on.”

  The key turned. Her eyes searched the room for the thousandth time, her brains revolved for the ten thousandth in an effort to find some weapon or some manner by which she could kill him. He had been careful on that score. He had needed only one experience in leaving her with implements available to learn the good use to which she could put them. The small schemes that came to her mind were discarded. She did not dare to take a chance. If she failed—everything would fail. She could not strike until she was positive he would not escape the blow.

  Carpenter had, on that morning, posted the second ultimatum for a collection which would insure the proper delivery. To do that had required a good many of the dark hours after he had locked Daryl in her bed room. The letter was mailed from the Bronx. He felt sure that she would think he had gone to the laboratory. She had apparently been tricked by his test ruses on five or six other occasions.

  He went instead to 95 George Street. His operations beneath Grand Central Station on subway tracks and railroad tracks, in dark corners and subterranean labyrinths required three busy hours. He then returned to George Street, ate a hasty meal, and walked up town after the food had vanished.

  He was sitting in a corner of the great staircase of the Public Library when the explosion took place. He was expecting it—alone of all the people around him—nevertheless he was deeply startled by its volume and violence. A shelving of the roof above him protected him from falling debris.

  He saw the people momentarily transfixed as if the Gorgon’s head had been revealed to them and he saw them commence to run. He saw a great block of stone fall squarely into the center of the street and crush a half dozen people clustered there. He heard the shrill sound of a chorus of police whistles. He watched the rapid clearing of the streets for the emergency apparatus which was on the scene in a remarkably short time.

  He saw the wild mob begin to form in Forty-second Street and watched it turn into Fifth Avenue. He sensed the sudden hush that had fallen by the sharpness with which any horn or whistle broke into it. He heard the undercurrent of human screams and groans that were echoed into the open square in front of the library. He watched the mob thicken until it was a dark human river on which floated an occasional bloody face, in which was lifted an occasional bloody hand.

  He surveyed the stampede from his eminence and stared down at the scattered and pulpy bodies that were cast out by its frantic feet like lumps of material flung in the wake of a tedder. Afterward he moved toward the station. He was on hand when a wall of the Commodore Hotel slid in a vertical avalanche to the street, engulfing a dozen fire trucks. He noticed that from the hem of its heap of Cyclopean debris a fireman’s hand spasmodically waved an axe.

  He inspected the ruins of the station, keeping his eye warily upon the standing buildings that surrounded the shambles. This was the result of his third experiment in the production of a high explosive, and he noted its effects with care and interest. The rescue work lacked organization. It occurred to him as he watched that when next he set off a battery of his bombs it might be most ruinous to public morale to keep one charge in waiting for the rescuers. After one such experience people would hesitate to go to the aid of their fellows—a situation calculated to be demoralizing.

  Carpenter now no longer shrank from the thought of blood and death. He executed individuals with dispatch and efficiency. The mass holocausts which he had caused w
ere too enormous and too complicated for any one man to stand beside them and charge himself with the blame.

  He stood nearby during an angry altercation between an Army Captain and a group of sound and motion picture photographers. The officer had no instructions to let them proceed. The photographers argued that good pictures would do more to rouse the country to action and end the menace than all the rescuing possible. Carpenter agreed with the photographers. He ended the argument by clambering up on a pile of debris and dropping a large fragment on the head of the officer.

  His reasoning was cold and accurate. The pictures should be taken. They would not help to end his menace—they would help to increase the fear of him. The photographers, somewhat stunned by what they considered a providential intervention, were nevertheless quick to profit by it and set up their machines to record the grewsome happenings in the street.

  A police line was now established completely encircling the area of havoc. Some order was instituted in the rescue work. Carpenter was satisfied by his observations and walked slowly down town. When he had progressed a few blocks, he heard the sound of shooting. The mob was being dispersed by machine guns. He hastily turned in the opposite direction. It would not do to take any avoidable risk of being wounded.

  He found Times Square black with people. The bulletin board in the middle bore the running letters that spelled out the horror of his handiwork. He read the story, judiciously criticising the way in which it was presented, and then he attempted to enter a subway. That was impossible. The trains were not running. He walked to the Pennsylvania Station. Another throng was stalled there. The station had been closed pending an inspection to determine if it, also, was to be destroyed.

  After a second long walk he found that ferries had been started for Brooklyn—but no late arrival could hope to board those ferries, unless, by chance, he was invisible and could slip through the rigid cordon. That Carpenter did, and an hour later found him starting his boat—a boat that seemed to run itself. It was a dangerous chance—but he was intent upon getting home.

  It had not required great mentality on Daryl’s part to read aright the situation which caused Carpenter’s departure in the morning. The people had not capitulated to his demand. Their time was ended. He would have to keep his pledge and go ahead with his massacre. The excitement of his voice, his petulance were indicators. She knew that when he said he was going to the laboratory, he was actually intending to go to the city.

  Moreover, she realized that his attitude toward her was becoming instable. She could not expect to protect herself much longer. Her past success added to her present desperation. She knew, this time, when he had left the room and when he had left the house. It was now necessary for her to act.

  She had on a previous occasion found herself in the identical position. She knew that Carpenter hung the key on a nail outside the door—so that he would not be embarrassed by having to carry it and so, at the same time, she could not knock it from the keyhole and draw it under the door. Her jailer had been careful to see that it was physically impossible for her to make an opening anywhere in the room. He had even substituted sandpaper for her nail file. She could beat against the door, the windows, the floors, walls or ceiling with a chair or the arm of a chair until she was exhausted without damaging the wood and metal.

  Carpenter could not use electric current or gas. Consequently they had lighted the room with numerous kerosene lamps and they used kerosene for cooking. He had reattached the telephone, but he had never used it. It was available for great emergency only. To keep up the appearance of vacancy there must be no meter to be read, no current leakage, no phone calls.

  The lights were used day and night, as, without them, the room was dark.

  In her first hour in the room Daryl had seen one method by which, if given sufficient time, she could escape. It was a dangerous method and slow. It might cost her life. She felt now that circumstances justified it. If she were ever to be successful, her time had come.

  She waited until Carpenter had been gone for nearly an hour. Then she wet a towel, wrapped it around her nose and mouth, put out one of the lamps, and poured some of the kerosene on the wall. Against the spot she also placed a chair. She struck a match and started a fire.

  In ten minutes the room was full of smoke and the air could scarcely be breathed. The absolute necessity of keeping the fire under control kept her grimly at her task. She used a wet cloth to damper it. She kept her head near the floor. When she became dizzy from the smoke, she went to the crack at the bottom of the door, placed her mouth against it and gulped in fresh air. The paper burned off, the plaster cracked, the laths beneath it caught fire.

  Thick smoke filled the room. She could no longer risk more than a half minute at the wall before returning to the base of the hall door. Outside of the house the paint began to blister. Twice the fire nearly escaped her frantic efforts. Each time she put it out, the smoke poured forth and she was forced to begin again. Finally she burned to the clapboards and through them. Her hands were black with charred wood. She had received a dozen burns. Her eyebrows were singed. She put out the fire and waited for a half hour.

  The house was isolated. At the same time the liberated smoke which curled through the first small hole might attract the investigation of some person and the danger would increase as her efforts were repeated. She did not dare attempt to break away. It was necessary to have her alibi always ready in case Carpenter returned. She would have to be able to tell him that the lamp fell over and set fire to the chair and the wall and that she had put it out, or was engaged in putting it out—as the case might be.

  At intervals, she enlarged the outside hole. At last she beat and wiped the crackling flames from the ragged rim in the clapboards, thrust her head and shoulders through the orifice and looked out on the sunny noonday world. She had worked so hard to direct the fire and to keep it from running up inside the walls that she readily convinced herself of the effectiveness of that labor. She assured herself that she could show Carpenter, if he came in at that moment, how the lamp had fallen, how the chair and wall had caught, how the fire had burned through the house before she could stop it. The stage had been set to match that fabrication. But Carpenter did not come and she knew that every instant increased her chances.

  She carefully arranged the inside of the room and then let herself through the hole, feet first. It was a long drop to the ground. She required but an instant to pick herself up and race over the deep grass.

  The first sign of civilization she encountered was a small house by the roadside. She ran breathlessly to the door, startled a fat, shambling woman by her appearance, asked to use the telephone and was told that the house was not equipped with an instrument. She hurried down the road. At a crossing was a small store with the blue tin sign that indicated a booth inside. She entered, hastily begged a nickel from the dumbfounded proprietor, and put in her call.

  It was fifteen minutes before she received a connection. The re-established telephone service had been thrown into new pandemonium by the afternoon’s explosion.

  Daryl did not realize that she was free. She could not believe in actuality when she heard Professor Quail’s calm, “Hello?”

  “This is Daryl. Don’t interrupt. Is Baxter there?”

  “Yes.” Quail remembered Baxter’s condition. “No—he isn’t. Gone out.”

  “Listen.” She opened the door of the booth and asked the name of the town. Then she turned back to the phone. “Mr. Quail! I’m at a town called Mirror, Long Island. Carpenter keeps me in a big yellow, gabled house in the middle of a big lawn on the shore a mile or more from Mirror. He’s out now. I’m calling from a pay station. The house is vacant. You can’t miss it. Yellow, gabled, big, on the shore. Carpenter’s away. I will go back. If he comes, I’ll keep him there. If he doesn’t come soon—don’t let him know any one is around until he does. Keep clear. I’ll shout something—no—I have it—I’ll start some smoke out of the chimney to let you know when
he is there. Get Baxter. And don’t let Carpenter escape. You can think of some system. Once he knows you’re around he’ll try to get out and remember—he’s invisible. Guard every door and window when you see the smoke—and guard it with your lives. Get plenty of men. And be sure not to do anything to make him suspicious. Better wait a week than be premature. What? Me? I’m all right. No. No. No—he didn’t. I’ll explain that later. But get Baxter and please come soon and carefully. I’m going now. Remember—Mirror, Long Island. Yellow house. Good-bye.”

  CHAPTER 10

  A SPOT OF INK

  Mrs. Quail had rushed to the side of her husband. He had said less than twenty words, but his manner, the expression on his face made understanding easy. He hung up.

  “It was Daryl!” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Was she all right?”

  “I think so. Come on. We’ve got to rouse Baxter.”

  Baxter was lying on the study couch, his face buried in a cushion. He breathed heavily. The Professor rushed into the room, caught his shoulder and shook him violently. The body moved limply beneath his hands.

  “Get some water,” he shouted to his wife, “aromatic ammonia, anything. We’ve got to get him up in no time—and he’s out cold. Hurry.”

  He resumed his shaking. One of Baxter’s eyes opened and showed a pupil in which only the faintest consciousness existed.

  “Lemme alone.”

  “Wake up!” Quail bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Wake up, you idiot! Daryl has called.”

  Baxter’s head wobbled from side to side with the repeated shaking. Professor Quail’s efforts increased and presently the young man rolled to the floor. Still he showed no indication of sanity and only the slightest automatic resentment of being disturbed. Quail pulled him back on the bed. Mrs. Quail brought aromatic spirits of ammonia in a glass, but they could not force the drink down Baxter’s throat. He coughed weakly, muttered a thick protest, and relaxed.