At the other end sat Miss Martha Belzer, but not the one who became so incensed years before because Aviation Consolidated had refused her a promotion which she knew that her ability merited. That Martha Belzer had gone to Europe on a vacation, news had come of her death in the Alps, and her body had never been located. This person was a capable looking, well-dressed, carefully shaved financial giant by the name of Mark Bonds. He had come over from France some years ago, well recommended, and by sheer ability had become a leader in the financial circles of America.
Years before, Miss Martha Belzer had spent a night writing to nine of her friends. Like her, those friends had all met tragic deaths, by fire or water, but always in some out-of-the-way part of the world where their bodies could not be found. Those nine businesswomen had also undergone a metamorphosis.
The twelfth place was occupied by a physician. She was, without question, the greatest biologist of hers, or any age of history. She and Miss Patricia Powers were women, dressed as women. The other ten persons at the table were the leaders in the new financial movement that was threatening the economic life of the group of old-timers.
Miss Powers started to open the meeting.
The telephone rang, and Mark Bonds answered it from his seat.
After listening intently, he curtly replied in a deep, masculine voice: “Bring her up.” Looking around, he remarked:
“You know that little red-headed telephone operator? Well, she is raising hell downstairs and says she has to see us right away. Says she has news that is vital to our interests.
“Do you mean Dorris Baines, the one just promoted to be our private operator?” asked Miss Powers.
“That’s the one,” answered the Manager, smiling as he spoke. Then he went to the door and opened it. In rushed the red-haired girl, breathless, her dress torn, her shoes muddy. Gasping, she almost fell to the floor. The great physician personally helped her to a seat and saw that she was given a stimulant. At last she was calm enough to tell her story.
“I know that you are going to punish me,” she faltered, “I know I have done wrong, but how was I to know? About three or four weeks ago I met a man in our church. He treated me swell, and made love to me, and then one night when I was on my way home from the Club I was caught by three big women and put in a taxi, and before I could say a word we were on our way to California. They would not tell me a word, would not even talk to me. Every time I tried to escape, they beat me. Out there I was chained to a bed in a shack in the desert. I thought I would die there. Finally, I got away. The Salvation Army helped me, and I finally reached New York. When I went to the boarding house, the landlady abused me. She said I was a liar, that I had been in New York all the time, and had paid my board regular, and even while we were talking a red-haired woman came out of my room with some of my clothes on and tried to catch me, and I ran as fast as I could to the Club for help, and when I heard that you were all here, I was bound to tell you, because something is wrong about it. Has there been a red-haired girl here? In my place?”
The Manager nodded, yes. Then he said kindly: “You have had a terrible experience, my dear girl. No doubt about some rascal trying to harm you in some way. You sit near me till we get through this meeting and then we will take up your case. In the meantime, I will have our private detectives go to your boarding house and try to find this other woman or whoever it is that is masquerading in your clothing. Your conduct shows how loyal you are to our movement, so we will have no hesitance in discussing matters freely with you. Tomorrow I want you to dictate the exact details to one of our private stenographers. It was certainly a most unusual experience. Now, Miss Powers, suppose we start with our meeting. Miss Baines, you just rest. No one is going to harm you now since you have reached us.
“I am so glad,” murmured the little woman.
Miss Powers began to speak.
“As President of our Association, I have called this meeting to make a careful survey of what has been done so far, and decide on a course of action in the future. I believe that the time has arrived for our more ambitious plans to start. Dr. Hamilton, will you give us a brief account of your invaluable work for us?”
The wonderful biologist smiled as she replied: “My work has really been interesting. When, years ago, you asked me for suggestions that would enable you to finally assume control of all America and perhaps the entire world, I had already done some very beautiful work, but, of course, I was handicapped by lack of funds and material. Your organization supplied both. You felt that it was necessary, for a few years at least, to place your financial campaign in the hands of five thousand brilliant well-trained financiers and business executives. These had to be men on account of the inability of women to even secure a finger-hold on the important positions. You asked me to solve that problem. I did. I asked you for a list of five thousand brilliant young unmarried women, well versed in the business management of great enterprises, who were willing to sacrifice their lives to the accomplishment of our great idea. You furnished me with that list, headed with the names of ten of the most remarkable feminine minds that the world had ever produced. At the top of that list was the name of the brains and originator of the movement, Miss Martha Belzer.
“We built up an organization and went to China. There we secured material for twenty-five thousand ampules of male gonadal solution, highly concentrated and of uniform strength. We purchased our so-called College in France and there, after all forms of imaginary deaths, our five thousand heroines came. First, they were thoroughly treated with radium and the X-ray to produce bodies that were natural, as far as sexual characteristics were concerned, and, after that, each one was given five doses of the substance that I was able to isolate and which, for convenience, I called MALE-FINE XXX. In a remarkably short time, these heroines experienced the desired physical changes: their voices deepened, became wonderfully masculine; they developed such growths of hair on the face that they had to begin shaving once a day. There was also a rather typical change in certain deposits of subcutaneous fat. But why go into all these details? It is sufficient to say that five thousand well educated, rather beautiful women entered our French laboratory and five thousand persons who looked like well-bred cultured men left it. What those five thousand did in the financial world can best be told by someone else.
“That was our first great task. Of course, this had to he done only once, because we felt that by the time that our new men grew old the women would be in complete control, without the necessity of such substitutes. In fact, it may be possible to reverse the process and change some of these heroines back into their original bodies.
“Our next important point of attack was to begin turning the human race into a feminine one. As you know, the relation between the number of male and female babies is very close. For centuries scientists have been trying to influence the sex of the unborn child. The problem was attacked from every possible angle. I was fortunate enough to arrive at what seems to be the correct solution. As you know, we patented a Modified Maternity Food for Expectant Mothers. It was a good food, and, as we sold it at cost and extensively advertised it, it was used by millions of mothers. As a result, last year there were three times as many girl babies as boy babies born in the United States. If we can continue this rate or increase it, we will soon have a feminine nation.
“That brings me to my final dream of a manless world. I feel that our organization can easily be spread over the entire globe. We do not want two sexes in this fair world of ours, not as long as one sex can run it so efficiently. But, of course, that sex has to continue on in its existence; we do not plan to destroy humanity. What I have in mind is the perfecting of parthenogenesis. By that, I mean the reproduction by virgin females of eggs which develop without being fertilized by the male principle, or sperm cell. This is an actual fact at the present time in certain insects, worms and crustaceans, the most familiar example being that of the aphid, in which a number of parthenogenetically produced generations occur entirely
composed of females.
“If worms and crabs can do that, the human female can; and the time is near at hand when we will. Later on, we will consider the production of females from ovulators in the laboratory and thus save our mature females the time and suffering of bearing their young. The growth of the young female, from the egg tip to the second or third year of life, will be provided for in our Government laboratories and nurseries. I am at work on these problems now, and, just as soon as we feel strong enough to take over the government, I shall be able to present a perfect plan for the development of future female generations that will in no way have the curse of masculine associations.
“As you know you are well aware of our plans, it is useless for me to go into details. Enough for me to say that when the time comes you will not find my department lagging behind in our effort to make this world perfect by the complete extermination of the hated male element of our population. In all this I have had your hearty support and cooperation.”
Chapter VII: Mistaken Identity
The eleven persons around the table heartily applauded the great biologist. Even the awe-struck red-headed, telephone operator timidly clapped her hands.
“Now, Martha, how about your end of it?” asked the wealthy woman whose enthusiasm and wealth had made all this possible. The person at the other end of the table, Mark Bond, elegantly attired in the height of fashionable clothing, stood up and smiled.
“We financiers have done well. At this moment we are planning an attack, which, if it succeeds, will put the entire wealth of the States in our hands. There were only five thousand of us who willingly sacrificed our sex to conquer womanhood for the purpose of climbing to success. Five thousand, but what a wonderful group that was! Their names will be engraved in letters of gold in the memorial that we are thinking of building for them in Washington. The men of the financial world have been but toys in our hands. We have played with them, as a child with his teddy bear, a cat with his mouse. All we have to do is to go onward toward the final glory. For a generation men can stay as messenger boys. Then we hope for a wonderful manless America.” And again the eager listeners applauded one of their greatest heroines.
Miss Patricia Powers smiled. That only made her uglier.
“It seems to me,” she said, “that we are going ahead nicely with our plans. I have carefully gone over your reports with the Manager of the Bridge Club. Everything is working out as we want it to come out, but I am sorry to report that quite a few of our brave five thousand are in private hospitals, suffering from a form of nervous exhaustion. Fortunately, we are in complete charge of these hospitals, and, so far, have been able to keep this news from becoming public. I am having a special investigation made of this unfortunate break in our health. We are unfortunate not to have a well-trained psychiatrist in our organization, and we do not feel that it is safe to refer these cases to a man. Otherwise, all is going well. Tomorrow we will start our final attack on Wall Street. Juliette, as Manager of our organization, have you any remarks to make?”
Juliette, known as James Jones, Manager of the Bridge Club, stood up, as he started to answer the inquiry.
“I am sure that anything I can say will be of interest to you. We are certainly fortunate in finding our little red-haired stenographer. Her conduct proves the loyalty of our organization, the high ideals of even the smallest member of the movement. I think that this brave woman should be rewarded. A thousand dollars would not be too much—”
“Oh! Please do not give me anything,” murmured Dorris Baines. “I only did my duty, and I am sorry it happened, because that bad man might have found out some of your secrets. If you think it safe, I would like to go back to the boarding house and go to bed. I am so tired.”
“We will see that you are well guarded,” the Manager assured her, and he pressed the button at his desk. A messenger girl answered the summons.
“Any news?” the Manager asked.
“Yes, Sir, your private detectives have a red-haired woman down stairs, and they want to bring her up as soon as you let them.”
“Send them up. That was quick work! It did not take them long to catch that female impersonator, did it?”
In a few minutes, three determined women walked in. There was something in their manner that conveyed the impression that they could be rather hard-boiled if they came in conflict with a criminal. With them was a red-haired woman. They were not holding her, but anyone could see that they were not going to let her get away. Except for the fact that she was a little better dressed, more carefully rouged, she was the exact duplicate of the red-haired woman who sat at the table with the Directors of the Bridge Club.
“Now, this is very interesting,” began the Manager. “Here by my side is Dorris Baines, who has just arrived in town, having escaped from tier kidnappers, and there in front of us is a person who looks like Dorris, who has been staying in her room and doing her work at the telephone exchange, and, in reality, all the time she was a detective. Our private detectives tell us that this person is none other than Taine, the great operator from San Francisco, paid by Johnson and his crowd to find out what we are doing in this Club.”
He walked over to the girl who was now held on either side by one of the detectives. “What did you do it for, Taine? How much were you going to get out of it?’ The red-haired girl did not answer.
“How do you like wearing a red wig, Taine?” No answer.
“Suppose I take it off?”
Silence.
The Manager took off the girl’s cap, and then grabbed the mass of red hair. It stuck. The girl cried out in pain.
“Bless me!” exclaimed the Manager. “It’s real hair. I am sorry that I hurt you, Dorris, if you are Dorris. But if you are, how did you get here and where have you been?”
“What do you want me to tell? Everything?” asked the woman whose hair had just been pulled.
“Yes, come over to the table and tell us all about it.”
“You see,” said the girl, rather nervously, “this man was good to me and so I reported it to you as our instructions were, and so when he had me kidnapped, why, of course, you knew it all the time. His women took me out to a shack somewhere in the California desert and it was not long before a dozen of our women came out there and over-powered his women and some of them stayed there to guard the three women and rest brought me back to New York. I have been in New York for about a week, all of that time I have been in one of the private rooms in the Club. Of course, as soon as I arrived I told the Manager all about what had happened; I had to in order to keep my vows to the Organization. That is all I have to say. I am sure that I have done nothing wrong.”
“No. You have acted in a wonderful way, Dorris. We are proud of you.”
He turned to his fellow members of the Directorate.
“Some of you have been in my confidence during these last few weeks, others know of this for the first time. Johnson, with the group of men he represents, was determined to learn our secrets. They engaged one of the most brilliant detectives in American, a man by the name of Taine. We knew when this enemy of ours went to Washington and when he went to San Francisco. We were informed when Taine arrived in New York. Every time he turned around we had a report of it. We played with him like a cat plays with a mouse. He had one of our girls kidnapped and she has just told you what happened. Then we made it possible for him to attend this meeting, and he did. He is here now. Of course, we wanted him to know all that he had taken such pains too learn; so, we went right on with the meeting, and I hope you have enjoyed it, Mr. Taine.” Here the Manager looked at the red-headed woman at his side.
The red-haired woman whom he had called Mr. Taine looked at him and smiled. “I guess I might as well own up, Mr. Manager. I am not Mr. Taine. I am Flossie Ruffles from the Lyric. My specialty is impersonations. For a week I have been trying to duplicate a red-haired girl and, for some reason, she gave me five thousand to come here tonight and put on this act. I am sorry if I worried you, but I re
ally needed the money and I thought you would not care. I believe from what you have said that it must have been Mr. Taine, the detective, who gave me the five thousand, though why he should have wanted me to do it, I cannot say.”
The Manager looked first at one of the red-haired girls and then at the other. Both seemed genuine. They were as much alike as though they were identical twins. He even went and examined the hair of the girl who had first entered the room. It was as genuine as the other girl’s was.
The Manager sat down. For what seemed hours he sat there, his eyes covered with his right hand. Suddenly he jumped up and leaned excitedly over the table. “That man Taine is in this room!” she cried. “There are twelve of us here at the table, these two girls and the three detectives. One of us is Taine. I know that I am not, and I can vouch for Miss Powers, and I am also sure of Dr. Hamilton and Mark Bond. But how about the others? Dr. Hamilton, I am going to ask you to examine these Directors. Everyone one of them, you know, should be a woman. But I am sure that one of them is a man, and that man is Taine.”
The men seated around the table looked at each other. One drummed on the polished surface with his finger tips. Tap-tap-rappity-tap-tap. On his hand glowed a wonderful Chinese ring. It was the San Francisco physician. He suddenly stood up.
“Suppose I say that I am Taine, Juliette? If I say that, will you spare these friends of ours the humiliation of your proposal of showing their real sex by your inspection of their bodies?”
The Manager looked across the table at the Doctor, long and piercingly. Then he shook his head. “No. Lucy, old girl. You are not Taine. I could swear that you are Lucy, the girl that went to China and helped Dr. Hamilton with her work there. Why, I have seen that ring a hundred times.”
“But I insist that I am Taine. Let’s put an end to the melodrama. These women here may be insane in their ideas, but they are, at least, women. I do not want them undressed; not here. I would rather tell you right now that we have come to the end of the play.”
Gynomorphs Page 6