John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  This excerpt from his paper — a pedantic observation without doubt — had prompted Blake Carson, spare-time dabbler in physics, to think further. Much further. He had heard Hardwick make that statement five years ago. Now Hardwick was dead, but every observation he had ever made, every treatise he had written, had been absorbed to the full by the young physicist. Between the ages of twenty-five and thirty he had plowed through the deeper works of Einstein, Eddington, and Jeans to boot.

  “Time,” Blake Carson observed, to his little laboratory, when the five years had gone by, “definitely does not exist! It is a concept engendered by the limitations of a physical body. And a physical body, according to Eddington and Jeans, is the outward manifestation of thought itself. Change the thought and you change the body in like proportion. You believe you know the past. So adjust your mind to the situation and there is no reason why you shouldn’t know the future.”

  Two years later he added an amendment.

  “Time is a circle, in which thought itself and all its creations go in an everlasting cycle, repeating the process without end. Therefore, if we have in a remote past done the same things we are doing now, it is logical to assume that some hangover of memory may be left behind — a hangover from the past which, from the present standpoint, will be in the future, so far back is it in the time circle.

  “The medium for thought is the brain. Therefore, any hangover must be in the brain. Find that, and you have the key to future time. All you will actually do will be to awake a memory of the remote past.”

  From this conception there sprouted in Blake Carson’s laboratory a complicated mass of apparatus contrived from hard-earned savings and erected in spare time. Again and again he built and rebuilt, tested and experimented, finally got assistance from two other young men with ideas similar to his own.

  They did not fully understand his theory but his enthusiasm certainly impressed them.

  At last he had things exactly as he wanted them, summoned his two friends one Saturday evening and waved a hand to his apparatus.

  Dick Glenbury was shock-haired, ruddy-faced, and blue-eyed — a man of impulses, honesty, and dependable concentration. Hart Cranshaw was the exact opposite — sallow-skinned, always unruffled, black-haired. A brilliant physicist, confirmed cynic, with only his great intelligence to save him from being a complete boor.

  “Boys, I have it,” Blake Carson declared with enthusiasm, gray eyes gleaming. “You know my theory regarding the hangover. This” — he motioned to the apparatus — “is the Probe.”

  “You don’t mean you intend to use all this stuff on your brain to probe for the right spot, do you?” Dick Glenbury demanded.

  “That is the idea, yes.”

  “When you’ve done this, what then?” Cranshaw asked, sticking to the practical side, as usual.

  “Tell you better when I know something,” Carson grinned. “Right now I want you to follow out instructions.”

  He seated himself in the chair immediately under the wilderness of odd-looking lenses, lamps, and tubes. Following directions Glenbury busied himself with the switchboard. One projector gave forth a violet ray that enveloped Blake Carson’s head completely.

  Opposite him, so he could see it clearly, a squared and numbered screen came into life and gave a perfect silhouette, X-ray wise, of his skull. It differed only from X-ray in that the convolutions of the brain were clearly shown more vividly than any other part.

  “There,” Carson gasped abruptly. “Look in Section Nine, Square Five. There’s a black oval mark — a blind spot. No registration at all. That is a hangover.”

  He pressed a switch on the chair arm.

  “Taking a photograph,” he explained. Then giving the order to cut off the entire apparatus, he got to his feet. Within a few minutes the self-developing tank produced a finished print. He handed it round in obvious delight.

  “So what?” Cranshaw growled, his sallow face mystified. “Now you have got a blind spot what good does it do you? All this is way outside the physics I ever learned. You still can’t see the future.” This last was added with some impatience.

  “But I shall.” Carson’s voice was tense. “You notice that that blind spot is exactly where we might expect it to be? In the subconscious area. To get a clear knowledge of what the spot contains there is only one method to use.”

  “Yeah.” Glenbury said grimly. “A surgeon should link up the blank portion with the active portion of your brain by means of a nerve. And would that be a ticklish business.”

  “I don’t need a surgeon,” Carson said. “Why a real nerve? A nerve is only a fleshly means of carrying minute electrical sensation. A small electric device can do it just as well. In other words an external mechanical nerve.”

  He turned aside and brought forth an object not unlike a stethoscope. At both ends were suction caps and small dry batteries. Between the caps was a length of strong cable.

  “A brain gives off minute electric charges — anybody knows that,” Carson resumed. “This mechanical device can accomplish the thing through the skull bone. Thereby the blind spot and normal brain area would be linked. At least that’s how I figure it.”

  “Well, all right,” Dick Glenbury said, with an uneasy glance at Hart Cranshaw. “To me it sounds like a novel way of committing suicide.”

  “Like suffocating in your own waste,” Cranshaw agreed.

  “If you weren’t so fact-bound you’d see my point,” Blake snorted. “Anyway, I’m going to try it.”

  Again he switched on his brain-reading equipment, studied the screen and the photograph for a moment, then he clamped one end of the artificial nerve device onto his skull. The other suction cup he moved indecisively about his head, positioning it by watching it on the screen. Time and again he fished round the blind spot, finally pressed the cap home.

  A sensation of crawling sickness passed through him as though his body were being slowly turned inside out. His laboratory, the tense faces of Glenbury and Cranshaw misted mysteriously and were gone. Images as though reflected from disturbed water rippled through his brain.

  An inchoate mass of impressions slammed suddenly into his consciousness. There were scurrying people superimposed on ragged cliffs, against which plunged foaming seas. From the cliffs there seemed to sprout the towers of an unknown, remote, incomparably beautiful city catching the light of an unseen sun. Machines — people — mists. A thundering, grinding pain …

  He opened his eyes suddenly to find himself sprawled on the laboratory floor with brandy scorching his throat.

  “Of all the darned, tomfool experiments,” Dick Glenbury exploded. “You went out like a light after the first few minutes.”

  “I told you it was no use,” Cranshaw snorted. “The laws of physics are against this kind of thing. Time is locked up —”

  “No, Hart, it isn’t.” Carson stirred on the floor and rubbed his aching head. “Definitely it isn’t,” he insisted.

  Getting to his feet he stared before him dreamily.

  “I saw the future!” he whispered. “It wasn’t anything clear — but it must have been the future. There was a city such as we have never imagined. Everything was cross-sectioned, like a montage. The reason for that was my own inaccuracy with the artificial nerve. Next time I’ll do better.”

  “Next time?” Cranshaw echoed. “You’re going on with this risk? It might even kill you before you’re through.”

  “Perhaps,” Carson admitted, in a quiet voice. He shrugged.

  “Pioneers have often paid dearly for their discoveries. But I have a key. I’m going on, boys, until it swings wide open.”

  For months afterwards Blake Carson became absorbed in his experiments. He gave up his ordinary work, lived on what savings he had and went tooth and nail after his discovery.

  At first he was elated by the precision and accuracy with which he could achieve results. Then as days passed both Hart Cranshaw and Dick Glenbury noticed that an odd change had come over him, for he seemed
morose, afraid of letting some statement or other escape him.

  “What is it, Blake?” Dick Glenbury insisted one evening, when he had arrived for the latest report on progress. “You’re different. Something is on your mind. You can surely tell me, your best friend.”

  As Blake Carson smiled, Glenbury suddenly noticed how tired he looked.

  “Which doesn’t include Hart, eh?” Carson asked.

  “I didn’t mean that exactly. But he is a bit cold-blooded when it comes to truths. What’s wrong?”

  “I have discovered when I am to die,” Blake Carson said soberly.

  “So what? We all die sometime.” Dick Glenbury stopped uneasily. There was a strange look on Blake Carson’s worn face.

  “Yes, we all die sometime, of course, but I shall go one month hence. On April fourteenth. And I shall die in the electric chair for first-degree murder.”

  Dick Glenbury stared, appalled. “What! You, a murderer? Why, it’s utterly — say, that artificial nerve has gone cockeyed.”

  “I’m afraid not, Dick,” answered Carson. “I realize now that death ends this particular phase of existence on this plane. The views of the future that I have seen refer to some other plane ways beyond this, the plane where successive deaths would ultimately carry me. With death, all association with things here is broken.”

  “I still don’t believe murder is ahead of you,” Dick Glenbury said.

  “None the less I shall die as a convicted murderer,” Carson went on, his voice harsh. “The man who gets me into this approaching mess and who will have the perfect alibi is — Hart Cranshaw.”

  “Hart? You mean he is going to commit a murder deliberately and blame you for it?”

  “Without doubt. We know already that he is interested now in this invention of mine; we know too that he realizes he has a blind spot in his brain, just as everybody else has. Hart, cold-blooded and calculating, sees the value of this invention to gain power and control for himself. Stock markets, gambling speculations, history before it appears. He could even rule the world. He will steal the secret from me and rid himself of the only two men in the world who know of his villainy.”

  ‘The only two men?” repeated Glenbury. “You mean I, also, will be slain?”

  “Yes.” Blake Carson’s voice had a faraway sound.

  “But this can’t happen,” Glenbury shouted huskily. “I’m not going to — to be murdered just to further the aims of Hart Cranshaw. Like blazes I am. You forget, Blake — forewarned is forearmed. We can defeat this.” his voice became eager. “Now that we know about it, we can take steps to block him.”

  “No,” Carson interrupted. “I’ve had many weeks to think this over, Dick — weeks that have nearly driven me mad as I realized the truth. The law of time is inexorable. It must happen! Don’t you even yet realize that all I have seen is only an infinitely remote memory from a past time, over which moments we are passing again? All this has happened before. You will be murdered as surely as I knew you would come here tonight, and I shall die convicted of that murder.”

  Dick Glenbury’s face had gone the color of putty. “When does it happen?”

  “At exactly nine minutes after eleven tonight — here.” Carson paused and gripped Glenbury’s shoulders tightly. “Stars above, Dick, can’t you realize how all this hurts me, how frightful it is for me to have to tell it all to you. It’s only because I know you’re a hundred percent that I spoke at all.”

  “Yes — I know.” Glenbury sank weakly into a chair. For a moment or two his mind wandered. Next he found that his frozen gaze was fixed on the electric clock. It was exactly forty minutes past ten.

  “At ten to eleven — in ten minutes, that is — Hart will come here,” Carson resumed. “His first words will be — ‘Sorry I’m late, boys, but I got held up at an Extraordinary Board Meeting.’ An argument will follow, then murder. Everything is clear up to the moment of my death. After that Hart is extinguished from my future. The vision of life continuing in a plane different from this one is something I have pondered pretty deeply.”

  Dick Glenbury did not speak, but Carson went on, musing aloud. “Suppose,” Carson said, “I was to try an experiment with time? Suppose, because I possess knowledge no man has ever had so far — I were able to upset the order of the Circle. Suppose, I came back, after I have been electrocuted, to confront Hart with your murder and my wrongful execution?”

  “No,” Glenbury’s mind was too lethargic to take things in.

  “I’ve already told you that the body obeys the mind. Normally, at my death, I shall recreate my body in a plane removed from this one. But suppose my thoughts upon the moment of death are entirely concentrated on returning to this plane at a date one week after execution? That would be April twenty-first. I believe I might thereby return to confront Hart.”

  “Do you know you can do this?”

  “No; but it seems logical to assume that I can. Since the future, after death, is on another plane, I cannot tell whether my plan would work or not. As I have told you, Hart ceases to be in my future time from the moment I die, unless I can change the course of Time and thereby do something unique. I guess I —” Carson broke off as the door opened suddenly and Hart Cranshaw came in. He threw down his hat casually.

  “Sorry I’m late, boys, but I got held up at an Extraordinary Board Meeting —” He broke off. “What’s wrong, Dick? Feeling faint?”

  Dick Glenbury did not answer. He was staring at the clock. It was exactly ten minutes to eleven.

  “He’s okay,” Blake Carson said quietly, turning. “Just had a bit of a shock, that’s all. I’ve been taking a look into the future, Hart, and I’ve discovered plenty that isn’t exactly agreeable.”

  “Oh?” Hart Cranshaw looked thoughtful for a moment, then went on, “Matter of fact, Blake, it strikes me that I’ve been none too cordial towards you considering the brilliance of the thing you have achieved. I’d like to know plenty more about this invention if you’d tell me.”

  “Yes, so you can steal it!” Dick Glenbury shouted suddenly, leaping to his feet. “That’s your intention. The future has shown that to Blake already. And you’ll try and kill me in the doing. But you’re not going to. By heavens, no! So Time can’t be cheated, Blake? We’ll see about that.”

  He raced for the door, but he did not reach it. Hart Cranshaw caught him by the arm and swung him back.

  “What the devil are you raving about?” he snapped. “Do you mean to say I intend to murder you?”

  “That is why you came here, Hart,” Carson declared quietly. “Time doesn’t lie, and all your bluster and pretended innocence makes not the least difference to your real intentions. You figure to do plenty with this invention of mine.”

  “All right, supposing I do?” Hart Cranshaw snapped, suddenly whipping an automatic from his pocket. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Blake Carson shrugged. “Only what immutable law makes me do!”

  “To blazes with this!” Dick Glenbury shouted suddenly. “I’m not standing here obeying immutable laws — not when my life’s in danger. Hart, drop that gun!”

  Hart Cranshaw only grinned frozenly. In desperation Glenbury dived for him, caught his foot in a snaking cable on the floor and collided with the physicist. Whether it was accident or design Blake Carson could not be sure at the moment, but the automatic certainly exploded.

  Hart Cranshaw stood in momentary silence as Dick Glenbury slid gently to the floor and lay still. Blake Carson’s eyes shifted to the clock — eleven-nine!

  At length Hart Cranshaw seemed to recover himself. He held his automatic more firmly.

  “Okay, Blake, you know the future, so you may as well know the rest —”

  “I do,” Blake Carson interrupted him. “You are going to pin this thing on me. You shot Dick deliberately.”

  “Not deliberately: it was an accident. It just happened to come sooner than I’d figured, that’s all. With both of you out of the way what is to prevent me becoming
even the master of the whole world with this gadget of yours? Nothing!” Hart Cranshaw gave a grim smile. “I planned it all out, Blake. For tonight I have a cast-iron alibi. It will be your task to prove yourself innocent of Dick Glenbury’s murder.”

  “I won’t succeed: I know that already.”

  Hart Cranshaw eyed him queerly. “Considering what I have done — and what I am going to do — you’re taking it mighty calmly.”

  “Why not? Knowledge of the future makes one know what is inescapable — for both of us.” Blake Carson spoke the last words significantly.

  “I’ve checked on my future already and I know darn well I’m in for a good time,” Hart Cranshaw retorted. He pondered for a moment then motioned with his gun. “I’m taking no chances on you wrecking this machinery, Blake. I’d shoot you first and alibi myself out of it afterwards, only I don’t want things to get too complicated. Grab the ’phone and call the police. Confess to them what you have done.”

  With resigned calm Blake Carson obeyed. When he was through Hart Cranshaw nodded complacently.

  “Good. Before the police arrive I’ll be gone, leaving you this gun to explain away. Since I have kept my gloves on it puts me in the clear for fingerprints even though there won’t be any of yours about. Just the same only you and Dick have been here together tonight. I have been elsewhere. I can prove it.”

  Blake Carson smiled grimly. “Then later you will pose as my sympathetic friend, will offer to look after my work while I am in custody, and save yourself by good lawyers and your cast-iron alibi. That’s clever, Hart. But remember, to everything there is an appointed time!”

  “Right now,” Hart Cranshaw answered in his conceited assured tones, “the future looks quite rosy so far as I am concerned …”

  Inevitably the law enacted every incident Blake Carson had already foreseen. Once in the hands of the police, cross-examined relentlessly, he saw all his chances of escape vanish. Carson was convicted of first-degree murder, and the Court pronounced the death sentence. The trial had proceeded in record time, as the murder was considered flagrant, and newspapers denounced Carson bitterly. To the horror of Carson’s lawyer, he refused to take an appeal or resort to the usual methods of delay. Carson’s attitude was fatalistic, and he could not be moved in his seeming determination to die.