Robert Bloch

by Atoms

  “What is it that there is?” he inquired, solicitously. “What sickens you? Is it that you dread the testing?”

  Frank shook his head and attempted a reassuring smile. Evidently it was a failure, because Professor Seine continued to regard him quizzically.

  “Is it that it is something you ate? Your stomach, she is upset?”

  “My stomach, she is empty,” Frank told him.

  “Ah, that is best, mon brave.” The Professor nodded gravely. “As we well comprehend, the success of ESP or psi experimentation can be imperiled by physical distractions. Eating and drinking spoil the victory. What is that which the poet says? ‘There’s many a slip between coupe and lip.’ But be of cheer, we shall not fail. We shall convince the Doctor Welk and his committee, we shall convince the reporters—”

  “Reporters?” Frank groaned. “Oh, no!”

  “Oh, oui!” Professor Seine gestured ahead as they rounded the driveway leading to the Welk mansion. “Regard them.”

  Frank regarded the waiting figures grouped on the porch. He recognized several of Dr. Welk’s colleagues on the faculty, plus two or three young men with the inevitable notebooks clustered around the corpulent red-faced man who scowled down at them over the rims of his glasses. A glimpse of Dr. Welk’s eyes was enough to terrify Frank, until he realized their bulging prominence was due to a trick of the spectacle lenses. From their thickness, it was reasonable to assume they had been ground at Mount Palomar.

  “Myopique,” the Professor murmured, apparently noting the same thing as he left the car and conducted Frank up the steps. “But he will see much, today.”

  Frank didn’t answer. He was searching for a sight of Nora. The girl was not in evidence.

  He hastily recalled himself to acknowledge introductions. In response to a question from one of the reporters, he enunciated his name slowly.

  “Tallent,” the reporter repeated, as he scribbled. “Didn’t somebody write a book about you? Charles Fort, maybe?”

  “Charles Fort was an old fool.” The rasping voice belonged to Dr. Welk. “Except, of course, when he was young. Then he was a young fool.”

  Professor Seine laughed merrily. “It is this skepticism which we today shall overcome,” he predicted. “If anyone advances anything new, people resist with all their might; they act as if they neither heard nor could comprehend; they speak of the new view with contempt, as if it were not worth the trouble of even so much as an investigation or a regard; and thus a new truth may wait a long time before it can make its way.”

  “Just the kind of nonsense I expected from you,” Dr. Welk observed.

  The Professor shrugged. “This is not my nonsense,” he answered mildly. “It is a statement of Goethe.”

  “Humph, I might have known. Goethe was a fool, too. Very unsound. All you have to do is look at his prefrontal lobes.”

  “This Gertie a friend of yours?” one of the reporters demanded, eagerly. But before the Professor could answer him, a disturbance was made by an appearance—and a very charming appearance it was—in the form of Nora.

  This form was duly admired as the young woman passed among the group and distributed glasses of a pink liquid.

  “I thought you gentlemen might like a little refreshment before you began the tests,” she said.

  “Hey, Bacardis!” exclaimed the reporter who wanted to know about Gertie.

  The girl shook her head. “No, it’s only fruit punch.” She approached Frank and gave him a level stare. He started to open his mouth, but his throat went dry. Automatically he accepted a glass and drank. He wished now that Nora had stayed away. Her presence disturbed him greatly, and her aloofness disturbed him even more. He found it difficult to concentrate on what was going on.

  Professor Seine had taken over now, and he was telling the reporters and Dr. Welk’s committee a few things about telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, clairvoyance, and dowsing. From a brief case he extracted a mimeographed report of his past six months of experimentation with Frank—the card-runs, the work with dice, the psychometric data.

  Dr. Welk cleared his throat for action. “Twaddle,” he said. “Sheer twaddle. Nobody can read minds.” He strode over to Professor Seine. “Go ahead and read my mind, I dare you to.” He glanced at his daughter. “On second thought, maybe you’d better wait until Nora leaves. What I’m thinking about you is best not repeated in mixed company.”

  “But I do not read of minds,” the Professor protested. “It is the young man here. He is the sensitive.”

  Frank smiled weakly. He didn’t feel like a sensitive. He was numb. He watched Nora refill the glasses from a large pitcher and extended his own with an imploring look. Nora refused to meet his eyes. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He couldn’t—the realization came to him with a flash of horror—tell what anyone was thinking. His head was beginning to whirl.

  “Let’s go inside,” Dr. Welk was saying, “and get this affair over with. I can’t afford to waste much time with such tomfoolery—I’ve got a four o’clock appointment to trepan a gorilla.”

  He led the party into a large old-fashioned study, with book-lined walls; obviously this was his private den in which he was wont to pace and growl at will.

  “You’ll find I have made the arrangements we agreed upon,” he told Professor Seine. “As I understood it, you asked me to conceal a deck of cards somewhere within the room, and also a packet of letters—”

  “Would you care for another drink before you begin?” Nora interrupted, coming in from the hall with a full pitcher. “It’s so hot today—”

  “Sure,” said the reporter who has asked about Charles Fort. “Say, you positive there isn’t any liquor in this? Stuff tastes like it’s got a kick in it.”

  “Not at all,” Nora told him. “As I understand it, liquor affects the precognitive faculties, doesn’t it, Professor?”

  “Certainement,” he responded. And as the company drank, Professor Seine proceeded to explain the theories he was about to demonstrate.

  Frank tried again to concentrate upon the conversation, but everything was blurry. Nora’s face wavered before him as she poured the contents of the pitcher into his glass. He tried to whisper to her. “Darling, won’t you at least say something to me? I’m so—”

  But she had turned away, and now Professor Seine had his hand on Frank’s shoulder and was propelling him to the table in the center of the room. He gestured at the crowd, indicating a row of chairs lined up against the far wall.

  “And now, messieurs,” he began, “if you will be so good as to discover your seats, we shall make a commencement. First we shall have the card-run, as I have explained. The doctor has undertaken to conceal a pack of playing cards here in this room. I shall now ask my subject to locate those cards.”

  He turned to Frank expectantly. Frank stood there—conscious of the perspiration bathing his palms, and of nothing else. He couldn’t concentrate. The room wavered. It was Nora’s fault—she had deliberately upset him so that the experiment would be a failure. He glanced nervously at Professor Seine. The gaunt investigator looked at him trustingly. It would be terrible to let him down now. It would be terrible to let himself down. Dr. Welk was scowling, murmuring to the committee and the reporters.

  Frank closed his eyes. Immediately the room steadied. He began to get a vague impression. It didn’t come quickly or clearly, as such impressions usually did, but it was coming.

  Eyes closed, he moved forward. One hand swept the line of bookcases. He fumbled for a book, removed it, reached behind. From a space between the books and the wall he extracted a rectangular object. Opening his eyes, he gazed down at a package of playing cards.

  His sigh of relief mingled with a sharp gasp from Dr. Welk.

  “But that’s not where I put them!” He exclaimed “There must be some mistake—”

  “Mistake?” Professor Seine smiled blandly as he took the unopened pack from Frank’s hand. “You concealed of the cards, did you not? And my subje
ct found of the cards, did he not? Let us proceed to the experiment.”

  Deftly he blindfolded Frank and placed him in the far corner of the room. Then, stepping briskly to the table, Professor Seine removed the pack, shuffled it, and extended it to the nearest committee member. Upon a whispered instruction, the committee member shuffled the pack again. A second committee member now laid the first card face down upon the table, in plain view.

  Frank stood motionless.

  “What do you perceive?” the Professor called.

  Frank gulped. He clenched his fists.

  “Eh bien, what it is that you see?” the Professor insisted.

  Frank shuddered. “Must I tell?” he quavered.

  “But well sure, you must! Describe the card, please!!”

  “All right,” Frank muttered. “You asked for it. This card has the picture of a naked blonde lying on her back and kicking a heart in the air with both feet. I suppose it’s the ace of hearts.”

  As the crowd gasped, Frank raced on. “And the second card, with the brunette and the pony, is the four of spades. The redhead and the sailor is the seven of diamonds, and the next one, with the three girls wearing the black brassieres, is the nine of clubs—”

  By this time Professor Seine was at the table, rapidly turning over the cards. Frank was right: the ace of hearts was followed, in turn, by the others as he’d described them.

  “A wolf-pack, by George!” exclaimed one of the reporters, crowding up to the table. “And boy, what a wolf-pack. Look at this here queen of diamonds; how’d she get mixed up with the Jack? Hey, Doc, I didn’t know you had anything like this around—”

  “Neither did I,” muttered Dr. Welk. “I mean, this is definitely not the deck I concealed. One of my students recently returned from a field expedition to Cuba. He brought back some curiosa for anthropological study and left them with me—”

  “Yeah, sure,” said the reporter. “We know how it is, Doc.” He tried to riffle through the rest of the deck, but Dr. Welk snatched it away. “Perhaps we’d better get on with the next phase,” he said. “We’ll consider this sufficient evidence.”

  “Ah, yes.” Professor Seine bowed blandly. “There is now the matter of the letters.” He removed Frank’s bandage, and in a low voice murmured, “What departs?”

  “Damned if I know,” Frank said. “I think you’d better call if off. Everything’s going blank again.”

  “Here, have a drink.” Nora was at his elbow, extending a glass. Frank was about to wave it away until he realized she was smiling. He drank gratefully, although his throat burned. She passed around the room, refilling glasses.

  Finally the Professor rapped for attention. “My good colleague has been instructed to conceal some letters in this room. I shall now ask that the subject find these communiqués and read of them aloud to you.”

  Frank shook his head. As he did so, the subliminal came to his aid. He walked waveringly to the desk, then paused. Dr. Welk’s eyes narrowed, but as Frank moved away from the desk he gave a sigh of relief.

  His bulging eyes widened again as Frank paused in front of a portrait of Whistler’s Mother, then pushed it aside and began to manipulate the combination of a safe concealed behind the picture.

  “That’s not the place!” Dr. Welk shouted, rising. “And how did you know the combination, anyway?”

  Frank, moving as though in a trance, continued to twirl the dial. The safe swung open. Frank reached in and extracted a packet of letters, bound in faded red ribbons. He put his hand over them, his eyes closing.

  “The first letter is dated June 12, 1932,” he muttered. “And it begins like this: Dear Honeybug, It is morning now but I can still taste your kisses. If only the nights would never end—”

  “Give me those!” Dr. Welk snatched the bundle from his hand and stuffed it into his coat.

  “Aren’t you going to tell us if he’s right, Doc?” cried the nearest reporter. “What’s with this ‘Honeybug’ business?”

  Dr. Welk’s face blossomed with a sudden case of rubella. “These are positively not the letters I had in mind,” he groaned. “Professor Seine, what is the meaning of this? Are you making mock of me?”

  “Non,” the parapsychologist protested. “I do not make the mock of you.” He glanced nervously at Frank, who stood there goggling. “We will commence the next phase of the experiment, please.” Professor Seine blinked and popped his hand to his mouth to stifle an expected belch. Several of the committee members noted the gesture and laughed raucously. Nora tittered in the background.

  Professor Seine shrugged and made haste to continue. “Dr. Welk has arranged certain objects in his lavatory, is it not?”

  “It is certainly not,” Dr. Welk boomed. “What I do in the lavatory is no concern of this investigation.”

  “Why not, Doc?” asked the most persistent of the two reporters, lurching to his feet. “Now take me, for instance. I do a lot of reading in the—”

  “Kindly shut your trap!” shouted Dr. Welk. “Professor Seine has reference to my laboratory. He asked me to arrange something on the table there, to test the subject’s ESP powers.”

  “Ah yes,” the Professor nodded. “It is as I say, the laboratory in which the good doctor conducts of the experiments, and not the lavatory, in which the good doctor—”

  “Get on with it!” yelled Dr. Welk. “I’m stifling in here and I’ve got a splitting headache. I put some stuff out on the table. Your stooge has never been in my laboratory. He’s supposed to guess what’s in there. Now, go ahead!”

  Frank turned and put his palms to his forehead. He felt the room reel. His mouth opened, seemingly of its own volition. The words came. “Reading from left to right,” he said, “I see a series of jars. The first one contains dill pickles. The second one contains a pickled foetus. The third one contains pure water.”

  He opened his eyes. “That’s right, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Dr. Welk nodded reluctantly. “As far as it goes,” he conceded.

  “But what about the fourth one?”

  “Fourth one?” Frank frowned. “There is no fourth one.”

  “Oh yes there is,” Dr. Welk exclaimed triumphantly. “Come along and I’ll show you.”

  The group trooped down the hall at Dr. Welk’s heels. He moved slowly and seemed to have some difficulty opening the laboratory door. But once inside he gestured at the table with a flourish.

  “You see?” he announced. “Four jars!”

  “Uh-uh,” said the eldest committee member. “Six.”

  “You’re seeing double,” his nearest neighbor told him. “There’s only three.”

  “Three!” echoed Professor Seine. “Regardez donc!”

  “Four, in plain English!” contradicted Dr. Welk. Then he stared. “Where’d it go?” he panted. “Where’d it disappear to? I could have sworn I had a fourth jar there. It was filled with a gallon of medical alco—”

  “Anyone for punch?” murmured Nora, sweetly, as she appeared in the doorway with a refilled pitcher.

  Frank bore down upon her. He brushed her aside and whispered hastily, “So that’s it, that’s what you did! Spiked punch! You knew I was affected by alcohol, you wanted to ruin the experiment. Well, I’ll show you—”

  But he had no time to show her anything. Professor Seine was leading them back along the hall, and out of the house.

  “We conclude with the dowsing,” he said.

  “Dowsing?” The reporter who knew Fort’s name was instantly alert. “That’s where you find water with a forked stick, isn’t it? But what’s that got to do with psi?”

  “It is an example of the clairvoyance, of a supernormal perceptive power,” Professor Seine told him, accepting a glass of punch. “The willow wand, she is not necessary; she is mere superstition. La radiesthésie—that which you name the dowsing—can be accomplished as well with a bent coat hanger as you will quickly see.”

  “Or just as poorly,” murmured Dr. Welk, lowering his voice so that Professo
r Seine could not hear him. “I took the trouble to get some of the boys from the Geology Department over here. You’ll find their reports inside. There’s no water on my land anywhere—it’s dry as a bone. Watch and see.”

  Professor Seine, for his part, had collared the reporters, both of whom were accepting their fifth glass of punch from Nora.

  “This instrument you observe on the lawn,” he explained. “He is a portable well-digger I made rent of this morning. When my young friend discovers water, I shall avail myself of it to make the bore. Attend, he emanates from the house now with the coat hanger.”

  Frank was emanating, but not very rapidly. A slow anger churned within him, mingling with the alcohol he had unwittingly consumed. Nora was giggling openly at him, but nobody seemed to notice it—the punch had done its work too well. Any attempt at extrasensory perception seemed doomed; for that matter nobody was in a condition to attempt normal perception. The side lawn was littered with straggling drunks as though a cocktail party had broken up and strewn the guests helter-skelter across the sward.

  Dr. Welk was shouting incoherently at him and waving his arms. “C’mon, let’s finish this up!” he called. “Don’t forget, I’ve got a four o’clock date with a gorilla!”

  “This is not of the time for monkey business,” Professor Seine retorted. “I ask that you be silent as the grave. The subject must concentrate with the utmost.”

  Frank raised the coat hanger. He took a deep breath, hoping to restore his sobriety. He had found water before; if there was a trace of moisture anywhere on this land, he knew the forces within him would inevitably lead him to it. The coat hanger would jerk, then point. And Professor Seine would drill. The Professor stalked behind him, panting now as he lifted the heavy portable driller with its long electrical cord trailing behind from its extension plug-in back at the house. The cord was three hundred feet long. Frank began to walk, slowly, his head bent.

  “Stop!” murmured the professor. “The cord, she is at the end of her rope.”