Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “We are interrupted,” he said, trying to keep his voice silken, although I could see uneasiness in his opaque eyes. “You will be taken back to your cell upstairs. I’ll take care of you later. Some slight disturbance has occurred outside the grounds of the estate. If, by some chance, it might be anyone seeking you—” he broke off ominously. Then he went on. “We have several thousand sticks of explosives hidden under the grounds and the house on this estate. The explosive is controlled by a central switch. Miss Cartwright, her Father, Professor Engles, here, and yourself, will all be blown to Hell if it appears as though there is the least likelihood of our being discovered. Remember that, Mr. Burke, if you please!”

  And then Khan barked something at the two Asiatics who stood guard over me. A moment later, and he had darted out into the cellar passageway—evidently going out to see what the trouble was. I was wondering about it myself, when the two guards jerked me to my feet and began to propel me to the door—obviously on instructions left by Khan. The door closed behind us and we stood in the dank, dark passageway, and the scene in the laboratory was cut off as if by a stage curtain. But back there, I knew, poor Engles was still being drained dry of knowledge by the dictagraph, while Khan’s lackeys stood guard over him.

  We Were moving along, a guard on either side of me, and in the darkness I stumbled once or twice. The second time I stumbled, I must have kicked a loose pebble that rattled hollowly in the cavernous passage. It startled my squat captors, and they peered excitedly ahead. Which gave me my idea. If their nerves were beginning to get sleazy—now was the time to act!

  MY cigarette case was still in my pocket, and I wasn’t noticed as I reached back for it. It was too dark, and besides both my captors knew that I’d been disarmed. Then the case was in my hand, a silver thing, rather large. Even under the circumstances I hated to think of parting with it. Joan had given it to me two years ago.

  I held it behind my back as we marched along through the darkness. The stone walls were damp, and close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to hit with a cigarette case, even throwing it with a high, backward, backhand flip—which I did at that instant.

  The clatter of the case striking the stone sides of the wall was like an unexpected fire gong—and instantly, just as I had hoped, both my captors wheeled as one, peering excitedly back through the darkness!

  This gave me my chance. As they wheeled, I turned too, but stepped back six inches, extending both hands wide to grab their smoothshaven skulls. I don’t think I ever put as much uuuuuumph into anything as I did to the yank I gave those two skulls as I brought my arms together. There was a nasty “crack” as their heads collided, and they slumped down at precisely the same time—both out cold!

  In something less than a minute, I had taken both their guns, jamming one in my pocket and holding the other ready for trouble. Then I got their keys, and for an instant I looked back at the great iron door behind which Engles was still held captive. But I knew I didn’t dare chance barging back in there. There were two more guards with him, and Khan and the others might be coming back at any moment.

  I did pause long enough to tear a few shirts apart and bind and gag the two unconscious little yellow men who lay at my feet. Then, sweating icily, I dragged them back into a darkened comer and got on my way. Speed was what counted now. And plenty of it.

  It was hit and miss, as I groped my way through the upper sections of the huge house. And there was no telling when I’d run into one of Khan’s little grizzly gnomes. Room after room, one by one, I used the keys that I’d taken from my captors, and I finally hit a winner, barging in on Professor Cartwright—tied and gagged, and lying stretched out on the floor of a bedroom!

  I had his bonds untied in less than a minute, and he sat up groggily, rubbing his chafed wrists and ankles and fighting for the breath that the gag in his mouth had taken away.

  “Give it to me fast, Professor,” I told him. “We haven’t a lot of time, and this isn’t the grand delivery, yet. There’s still a swarm of yellowjackets running around this diggings, and we’re liable to be greeted by some of ’em at any minute. Where’s

  Joan? Do you know where they’re holding her?”

  “Jim,” he began. He was badly shaken, bewildered. But I had to cut him short.

  “There’s time for that later,” I said urgently. “Come on, try to stand. Here.” I pressed the automatic I had in my pocket into his hand. “You’ll need this. Now, again, where’s Joan?”

  Professor Cartwright was a little, sawed-off man with white hair and a perpetually inquisitive glance. He would have looked funny standing there holding a gun and looking grimly bewildered if the circumstances had been any different. But they weren’t.

  “I’m not certain,” Cartwright said, “but I think she’s on this floor. I got a glance of her through an open door along the hallway outside when they were bringing me up here!”

  “Let’s get going then,” I barked.

  THERE was no one in the hall, as yet, when we stepped quickly out of the room in which they’d been holding Cartwright. With the set of keys I’d stolen, we began moving along all the doors along the hallway. There must have been at least fifteen of them in addition to the one in which I’d found Cartwright. Suddenly Cartwright snapped his fingers.

  “I remember, Jim. It’s down at the end of this hall, the very last door. Was too dazed to recall it until now. But I’m certain she’s in that room!”

  He was pointing about twelve doors down the hall, and I was suddenly thankful. This would save us a lot of time. In ten seconds flat we were down to that door. And in that instant later we had thrown it open and stepped inside. I didn’t know quite what I’d been expecting to see, so of course I held the gun ready. I think Cartwright was waving his automatic around, too, but I can’t recall exactly, for the shock of the sight that met our eyes left me cold all over.

  The room was empty!

  But Joan had obviously been in the room, and recently. The unmistakable odor of her perfume hit my nostrils immediately. And in addition to that, a broken piece of coral bracelet that belonged to her was lying on the floor. But no Joan—that was the thought that choked my heart in a sudden, awful wrench!

  Cartwright started to say something, and

  I’ll never know what it was, for in the next split-second a shot slammed out in the hallway and a bullet whined less than a foot from my ear and splattered into the wall behind me!

  I dived to the rug, dragging Cartwright down with me, my finger instinctively squeezing hard on the trigger of the gun in my hand. I don’t know if I hit anything, but I was aiming in the direction of that shot, and my gun was kicking hard, spitting orange streaks in the right direction. The noise and smoke and confusion was astonishing.

  Suddenly the smoke cleared enough for me to catch a quick glimpse of three little Asiatics darting to the shelter of doorways along the hall. And in a moment later the three were blazing forth from their hasty barricades, their shots panging too accurately for comfort.

  It was during all this that I squirmed my way out of range, old Professor Cartwright inching right along beside me, to a spot where I was able to make a rising leap for the wall switch. My hand caught the button, and we were given the instant advantage of inky blackness to conceal our movements.

  There were three more shots, then, followed by a ringing silence. A silence that seemed to last an eternity, and made the flesh creep along the nape of my neck. I could hear Cartwright breathing softly beside me, and I turned my head a little to whisper.

  “Wonder what in the hell they’re up to?” I hissed.

  “Ummmnnnh,” the Professor muttered back. “Wish we knew.”

  “I don’t like it. Another three minutes of this and they can round up everyone in the joint to start potting us out of our hole!” I answered.

  But I was mistaken, or so I thought, for the shooting broke out again an instant later, and we were kept busy rolling out of the way of splintering plaster. Cartwright
was shooting now, and I had a second to marvel at the way he used a gun—carefully, but with efficiency. We were saving our shots, by unspoken agreement. However, we had to return every fourth or fifth bullet to show them we were still on the job. Much more of this and our guns would be empty.

  The din was terrific, and it was certain that Khan was in on the fun by now, for he couldn’t have missed the noise. I was speculating on this, and wondering how many of the yellow devils had ganged up in the hallway there—when the walls caved in and everything went inky!

  They must have used gun butts to do the trick, the lads who had crept stealthily in through the window of our room—while the gunplay was going on!

  CHAPTER VI

  Welcome, Mr. Wu!

  SOMEONE was sloshing water over my face, and it was ice-cold and quite unpleasant. Voices murmured in the background, hazily at first, and then more clearly. A great, white, hot light seemed to be tearing my eyelids apart. And then I regained, consciousness.

  Morea Khan stood over me, an empty glass in his hand. One glance showed me that we were back in his cellar laboratory, and that Professor Cartwright was also present. The old man was bound and gagged, strapped in a chair directly opposite me. I was pigtied in the same fashion. But I wasn’t gagged. There were seven of Khan’s Asiatic flunkies standing around the dictagraph machine.

  The flunkies moved slightly, giving me my first clear view of the machine. Professor Engles was still strapped in the wired chair beside it. He was dead. Morea Khan, the baldheaded yellow devil, must have seen the horror that sprang to my eyes at the sight of Engles’ body.

  “Unfortunate, Mr. Burke, that I had to leave my boys in charge of the machine. The disturbance at the gates to the estate was but a trifling one, but by the time I returned to the laboratory, my able assistants had permitted Engles to die. However, not before the record was made. A pity.” But even as Khan’s words hissed to a polite ending, I could see that his cockiness was vastly shaken. The short, but healthy fight which Cartwright and I had made of it must have scared hell out of him.

  “What’s the pitch?” I snarled. “Why didn’t you get rid of us when you had the chance upstairs?”

  “There is still a certain question, the answer to which I think you know,” Khan said ominously. “Professor Cartwright, over there, refused to divulge the knowledge. Unfortunately, our methods of persuading him to do so resulted in his losing consciousness for the moment.”

  I glanced quickly to the old Professor. I hadn’t noticed it until now, but he was out—definitely. One look at the soles of his naked feet was enough to make me want to vomit. The unconsciousness which had come to ease the pain had been a blessing for him. Then Khan must have read my thought about the dictagraph machine.

  “Perhaps you wonder why I did not put Cartwright in his own device, and thus obtain the information?” he asked silkily. “The answer is simple. The information we want is contained in the black book, the one I, er, mentioned to you before. If we’d risk Cartwright’s life in the machine, and fail to get the information, we would never be certain of obtaining it.”

  “And what do you want from the book?” Khan smiled evily at my question. “It is the revitalizing process by which the effects of the machine are repaired, by which the brain information grooves are restored in the individual who has been sapped of his knowledge. Through it, we will be able to use our information guinea pigs again and again. Very important to the scheme in which the Cause intends to use our, er, borrowed scientific knowledge. It was a shame, for example, that Engles had to die. We could have forced him to work out further formulae for us.”

  “So?” I tried to dig up every last ounce of scorn for the word.

  “You can tell us where the book is,” Khan’s voice contained an ominous hint of what he intended to do if I wouldn’t talk.

  “I told you before,” I shouted, “I was relieved of the damned thing by—”

  I didn’t finish that sentence, for at that moment the iron door swung open, and someone stepped into the laboratory. That someone’s voice said politely:

  “By Mr. Wu?”

  THE entire room seemed to hang suspended in a shocked silence, while all eyes gazed askance at the figure standing in the doorway. It was as perfectly a timed entrance as a Barrymore might have demanded. But this wasn’t Barrymore—it was Mr. Wu!

  He was smiling, that same silly little smile. He still wore his frock coat and striped trousers, but his homburg hat was missing. His almond eyes peered pleasantly out from behind his spectacles, and his gloved right hand held a gun, quite unwaveringly, on the entire room.

  Cartwright and I were bound, and Engles was dead. Consequently Khan nor any of his henchmen were displaying fighting ware. You could see Mr. Wu’s sharp little eyes noting all this with satisfaction.

  “You all have weapons concealed on your person. Do not attempt to reach for them,” Mr. Wu declared, and his voice was like a host’s asking guests to stay for tea. “Please move more closely together,” he added, waving that gun ever so slightly. Khan’s thugs shuffled closer, and Mr. Wu, with never a trace of fear, moved over to them. Calmly, one-by-one, he took their weapons. He deposited all these in a neat little pile at his feet.

  “That is better,” he said. “Much better. Now please untie the bonds of Mr. Burke.” The Asiatics behaved as though they were hypnotized, and even Khan, glaring wildly at Mr. Wu, hadn’t uttered a word yet. Then one of the lackeys was untying me. Moments later I was stretching the kinks out of my muscles, while Mr. Wu said:

  “You will untie Professor Cartwright please, Mr. Burke. Dash water in his face to bring him around.”

  It was while I was loosening Cartwright’s bonds that Khan suddenly broke loose in a violent torrent of strange dialect.

  Mr. Wu had moved back to lean against the laboratory wall, next to what looked like a gigantic fuse box. He was still smiling foolishly, but the corners of his mouth seemed drawn and extremely tired. He barked a single sharp sentence at Kahn, also in a strange dialect that wasn’t Chinese, gesturing sharply with his gun.

  Kahn shut up instantly.

  “He told me that I was being exceedingly foolish, Mr. Burke.” Wu said conversationally. “He remarked that his other henchmen would close in on me, once the alarm were given. But of course, I had adjusted the matter of the others before entering the laboratory. Not being young—as I observed to you once before, Mr. Burke—it is not my habit to be foolish.” But I was frantically splashing water over Professor Cartwright, and at last he came out of his fog, moaning slightly as the pain in him wakened also. Then, blinking, Cartwright saw the entire panorama, his jaw falling open in astonishment,: the sight seeming to drive the thought of pain from his mind.

  “What does this add up to, Mr. Wu?” I demanded. “Why are you freeing us, or are you? Where is the girl?”

  “I am freeing you, but not out of any emotional instability. I am freeing you because I have found that many things are necessary in this last twenty-four hour period. You and Professor Cartwright will be permitted to leave, without the machine, the dictagraph. I will remain to clean up a most untidy affair—to, as you occidentals might say it, settle a score, with Mr. Khan and his friends.”

  I was almost screaming my question. “But damn you, Wu, what about Joan? What about the girl? You seem to know everything, so where is she?”

  MR. WU smiled that silly smile that was growing more weary with every passing minute.

  “The girl is safe. She is waiting in a car, outside. Her mind will have to be restored. However, her father, with the aid of his very valuable black book. . .” Mr. Wu paused to extract the black leather notebook from his pocket and toss it into my startled grasp . . . “will be able to successfully restore her mind, once you have all gotten to safety.”

  I might have only imagined it, but I thought I saw the gun in Mr. Wu’s hand waver ever so slightly. But his quiet, precise voice went on.

  “Briefly Mr. Burke, the story is this. Khan’s gove
rnment is planning, through a union with certain European powers, to crush my own homeland. Khan is an agent for this government, and I serve my own country. It was essential to my government that Khan’s seizure of the deadly dictagraph machine was not successful. I was delegated to prevent that seizure.

  “Up until this point, my efforts have been inexcusably clumsy, very poorly timed. Khan almost succeeded, thanks to my dull wit. But at the moment, I hold all the . . . ah . . . aces. I intend to keep them. Khan shall not escape these grounds, neither will his henchmen.”

  For a second I started to say something, then Mr. Wu went on.

  “Your lives are not essential to our plans, Mr. Burke, and so I am giving you time to leave. It was I who removed the girl from her room at the moment that Khan held you captive down here. As I said, she is safely awaiting you in an automobile by the side gate. One of my assistants is driving. I must have your pledge that you do not try to hold him, once he has taken you all back to the city.”

  “You’ve got it,” I said quickly. “But why don’t you come—”

  Mr. Wu cut me off, politely.

  “You do not understand the code of my race, Mr. Burke. I almost bungled my mission in stopping Mr. Khan. I have determined not to bungle again. According to code, there is but one thing I can do—escort Khan and his devils to the gates of Hell.”

  Sweat stood out in tiny drops on Mr. Wu’s brow, and he seemed to be needing all the support he could get from the wall. His hand went up to touch the switch beside him.

  “This estate,” he said, “is mined with dynamite. One touch of this lever, and all is destroyed—the machine, Mr. Khan, his henchmen, and myself. Someone must remain to touch this switch. I will do so.”