RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
Amazing Stories, August 1940, with "Murder in the Time World"
"They can't accuse me of a crime when there is no evidence that it has been committed," said Karl Tarig. So he sent the body of the murdered man into the future. But he didn't realize the truth of the adage: Time will tell!
Tarig lifted the corpse of old Higgins into the time cabinet.
KARL TARIG shot a cautious glance toward Dr. Claude Morrison. The man had his back to him, poring over his precious formulas. Tarig leaned over and, still watching craftily, unhooked the main power lead from its terminal on the D-4 Accelerator. Then he straightened up.
"I say, Claude, did you mean to leave this cable disconnected?"
Dr. Morrison looked around, obviously irritated.
"What? Of course not!" Morrison strode across the laboratory.
"That is some more of your clumsiness, Karl," he remarked tartly, staring down at the heavily insulated wire. "I ran a test on the machine only this morning."
Tarig moved as if to pick the cable up.
"No, no," objected Morrison. "You'll be blowing the main tube next. I can't have that. The whole available world supply of faradium is in its filament. It would take ten years to accumulate that much again."
With deft fingers Dr. Morrison reset the switches and repaired the connection, Tarig watching sullenly.
"What about the temperature of the detonon?" asked Morrison sharply. Time machines were the scientist's hobby; explosives his work.
"It's okay; I just looked."
Tarig's manner was carelessly indifferent, as though he didn't give a damn.
Morrison snorted and walked hastily down the aisle between the lead-topped laboratory tables to where the fuming mixing vat sat. He checked the trickle of sulfuric acid, the speed of the rotating paddles churning the potent explosive, and the setting of the rheostat on the refrigerating machine. He made a few adjustments, then turned on Tarig.
"I've tried to impress on you, Karl, the danger in these experiments with super-explosives. That is why this laboratory is set back here in the hills, forty miles from nowhere. The acid generates heat, and heat will set the stuff off while it's in this stage. If you don't keep it chilled—well, it's bang! —up we go."
"Yes, sir," mumbled Tarig. He wasn't quite ready for the showdown. Not yet. There was something he had to learn; that was why he broke the connection.
"I'm wondering also, Karl," Morrison went on, for he had suffered in patient silence for a long time, "whether my bringing you here was such a good idea after all. You only show up when you feel like it; and even when you come, I can't depend on you to do what I tell you. Moreover, I don't like the way you're stringing that Warren girl along. She's an innocent little thing, and doesn't know the slightest bit about your past."
"My hard luck, you mean," retorted Tarig flaring.
"Your drinking and gambling away of your father's fortune wasn't hard luck. And those embezzlement charges they brought against you in Fairfield wasn't hard luck..."
"It was a frame-up," Tarig growled.
"I took your word it was a frame-up," said Morrison calmly, "but in view of the way things have been disappearing around here—well, I am not so sure. I am beginning to regret I hired you—gave you a chance when no one else would."
Tarig merely glowered. He knew he could break Morrison in two with his bare hands, but he had a better plan. All it needed was one more detail, and that he would have to get from Morrison himself. He must pretend a little longer.
"I'm sorry, Claude," he said, with appearance of meek submission. "I didn't realize... I'll try to do better."
Morrison looked at him sharply, and wondered. Was he being unjust? Perhaps Karl Tarig was only stupid, lazy. One could not be blamed for that.
"We'll see," he said, and walked back toward his desk.
"I WISH I knew more about this machine," Karl Tarig said, as they passed abreast the Accelerator.
Morrison stopped and looked at him again. Tarig had assisted him in his experiments with the smaller model machine and certainly should understand the larger, full-size one they had built since. The two were identical in principle. It was only that the new model could accommodate a human being that made the difference.
"Oh, I know it is a kind of time machine," said Tarig hastily, correctly reading the puzzled frown on the scientist's brow. "I saw you put that cage of canaries in the first model and saw it disappear, and then reappear three days later, still singing.
"And I helped you with the cat—the time you shot it a month ahead into the future. But why doesn't the machine disappear too? All the time machines I've ever heard about went along with their inventor, like an automobile."
"That is an intelligent question," answered Morrison, a little mollified, "and I don't mind answering it."
The two strangely contrasted men were standing before the queer contraption that stood on a step-high platform, in the corner of the outer stone walls of the squat laboratory building. No one would have guessed the two men to be cousins. For Tarig was tall and of massive build, with a heavy-jawed, stolid face, while Dr. Morrison was much shorter and more slender, with expressive features and keen, intelligent eyes.
Morrison indicated the ovoid shell of translucent material that hung like a hood over the single chair sitting on the platform. Despite its queer, shell-like shape, it was a vacuum tube, and it was laced with greenish filaments, from whose outer terminals a maze of braided wire led through a set of controls within easy reach of a person seated within the machine itself. From the regulating lever in the control quadrant, a cable led to a nearby switch panel, behind which stood yet another bank of tubes.
"The force-field of that faradium tube," Morrison explained, "has the effect of inhibiting all molecular motion within it." An object placed there ceases to exist the moment the current is turned on. The inhibition is not permanent, but is proportional to the time of exposure to the field. Sooner or later the effect will wear off and the object will resume its former condition. It is not exactly time travel—it is more a catapulting into time."
"Like shooting off a cannon," observed Tarig.
"Exactly!" exclaimed Morrison, surprised and pleased that Tarig should comprehend so well. He was beginning to feel he had been hasty in his judgment.
"Like a cannon, the machine does not have to follow its projectile. That is why I call it an Accelerator and not a time machine, although even that term is a little misleading. All the Accelerator really does is cause things to cease to exist temporarily, for all practical purposes. In the meantime, time passes the subject being 'projected'. The subject has the illusion of time travel. Actually, the subject waits for time to catch up."
"I see," said Karl Tarig. As a matter of fact, he already knew that much. What he wanted to know—had to know—was the scale at which the machine was set.
"But what I don't get," he asked, "is how much exposure puts you how far into the future?"
"Oh," said Morrison, "the graduations on the quadrant? Well, I haven't had time to calibrate that accurately yet. It will work out as a curve of some sort. The longer the machine runs, the farther it'll shoot the subject. For example, the first few seconds cause a disappearance of about an hour per second. Once the machine is warm and the field concentrated, I compute that each hour of exposure will jump the subject another ten years ahead."
"I see," said Karl Tarig absently. His eyes were roving the windows. Old Man Higgins, the caretaker, was nowhere in sight. He must have gone home, as the sun was setting. Ellen Warren would be coming about seven with the night lunches for himself and Morrison, prepared by her widowed mother in their little cottage over the hill. It was not much past six just then.
"I hope some day," Dr. Morrison was saying, "to personally make a test trip in the machine longer than the few short ones I've made lately. I mean a really long one—one of several years. If I only had a chance to get away from this routine of developing new explosives so that I could play with my hobby more..."
"YOU'VE got that chance now, pal!"
The abrupt change in Karl Tarig's manner was explosive in its suddenness. Dr. Morrison whirled to face a countenance distorted with murderous fury. There was envy there, and jealousy, but staring starkly at him was sheer gloating—the lust of cruelty for cruelty's own sake.
Two hair-matted paws of hands closed tightly about his throat, choking, choking. Through a red mist Morrison glimpsed the leering, panting face that bore down on him. He tried to struggle, sputtered once, as the more powerful man shifted his grip. Then, with purpling face, he slipped into unconsciousness.
Tarig released his hold and let the limp scientist slip to the floor. He viewed the twitching figure calmly.
Heretofore he had refrained from major crime because he was yellow—afraid. Afraid of the law—the noose or the chair. But he was bold now. He was immune from the law. To hell with the law! For he had thought out the perfect crime. There could be no dangerous consequences. You can't hang a man for murder without a body—a corpus delicti. For the first time in the history of crime, a murderer had at his disposal the sure means of ridding himself of his corpse.
"He wanted to try out a long stretch," muttered Tarig. "All right, he'll have a century. I'll soak him in the juice all night."
He reached down and caught Morrison by the wrists, meaning to drag the scientist up into the Accelerator. He would set the lever all the way over—ten or twelve hours, and then pull the switch. No more Morrison. No more hateful condescension and lectures. He stepped backward, dragging his victim easily.
It was then that he heard Ellen Warren's cheery "Yoo-hoo!" outside.
"Damn!" muttered Tarig, his face suddenly white. She was early, by a full half hour. He could not get the machine started before she would be in the room. She would see Morrison, and that would spoil the little scheme he had planned for her, for his plan included her as well as his employer.
Then he thought of the storeroom back of him, the only inner room in the building. With a savage yank and a heave, he skidded the unconscious Morrison to its door, tossed him in and pulled the door to. He had just time to slip the padlock into the hasps and snap it shut before Ellen's step was heard on the gravel at the outer door.
"WHERE'S Claude?" she asked, smiling as she came forward.
Tarig drew a deep breath of relief.
"He's gone off somewhere," he said slowly, trying to return her smile, his eyes never leaving her. "He won't be back, so we needn't wait for him."
"He can't be far," she said. "His car is still outside. It'll be better to wait. He's been very cordial to me, and to you too, Karl."
"A little too cordial, if you ask me," Tarig said harshly, in spite of himself. "I don't like the way he's been trying to make up to you, kid."
"Silly! I meant he's been such a—good friend, you know."
"Well, skip that. He's gone, I tell you. He's out of it."
"Gone where?" she demanded, seemingly a little uneasy. Ellen did not like the rough attitude Tarig was showing. She had never seen him like that.
Suddenly he felt unable to restrain himself from blurting out,
"Gone into the future, you damn little fool!" Then, realizing he had told more than he meant to, he tried to cover hastily.
"You know what a nut he is about this time machine he invented. Well, he's off to try it. Said for me to take over and run things here until we caught up with him."
Ellen looked him in the face incredulously. She took a swift sideward step and laid her hand against the ovoid hood over the Accelerator's throne-like seat The machine was cold.
"You're lying, Karl Tarig," she cried. "That machine has not been used for hours. I know. I helped him with the little model! It was my cat he used."
THERE was a scuffling in the storeroom, and a muffled moan. "He's in there!" Ellen screamed, staring at the locked door. "You've done something to him!"
Tarig sprang at her and dragged her to his chest in an embrace of iron.
"Okay, baby, I'll get tough if you make me. You asked for it. Now get this: he hasn't gone yet, but he's going—going way to hell-and-gone into the future. And then we follow, but not so far. Yes, we! First you, then me."
"Let me loose, you fiend!" Ellen cried, plunging her clenched fists between them as a pair of buffers, and at the same time kicking him with all the force she could put behind her sharp little toe.
"Take it easy, kid." Tarig was laughing. It was all so simple. "I'd smooth you down now, but I've got things to do. When you wake up, I'll be here. I'll have a lot of dough, and there won't be anything but woods all around. You'll make a pretty face then, I'll bet!"
"Money—woods?" she asked, quieting down with an intense effort. She was stalling to see if she could hear more sounds from the storeroom. Maybe old Higgins would come in; she had passed him at the gate lodge. Ellen knew she must get a grip on herself and play a part, for she was desperately frightened. Tarig had gone mad.
"Money!" Tarig was saying. "Think of what the platinum dishes in this place will bring, and the gold that he keeps in the safe for those fool fulminates! I'll materialize first and sell that, learn the lay of the land, and then be ready for you. When you come to, you'll be in the woods here, but I'll be right by you, baby."
Ellen was frantic. "You can't do this foolish thing, Karl," she urged, now that she knew something of what was going on in his mind. "People will come here tomorrow, looking for us, and the police—they'll know what happened—"
"That's where you're wrong, kid.
They won't," Tarig sneered. "Because tomorrow there won't be any building here, or any Accelerator, or any of Mr. Smartaleck Morrison's notes on how to build one. I've got brains, kid. I've thought of everything. Trail along with me, baby, and you'll wear diamonds!"
He pawed her, trying to bring her mouth up to his, but only half succeeded. Then he lifted her bodily and sat her down inside the time machine.
"No!" Ellen shrieked, fighting back, and half slipping from the seat.
Tarig's answer was a hard slap and a savage push that jammed the girl's slender body into the niche in the machine.
"You'll be all right, honey-pie," Tarig said mockingly. "I haven't time now, but ten years from now..."
He strode across to the switchboard. The two hardest steps along the road to riches and independence were behind him. From now on it was nothing but a matter of timing. He set the knobs on the board the way Morrison had taught him, pulled the big knife-switch. Electricity was up to the notched quadrant.
"So long, kid. I'll be seeing you," Tarig said to the unconscious girl. The lever was in the one-hour position. His finger pressed the button and he jumped back into the clear.
He heard the rising whine, saw the silvery threads of living fire leap out and lace into the fair flesh before him; saw that flesh quiver under the tingling impact, then vanish. Ellen Warren was gone. Gone to the year 1950!
KARL TARIG noted the time—6:32 p.m. That was fine. Then the juice would automatically cut off at 7:32. After that it would be Morrison's turn. He would give Morrison most of the night to ride, or at least ten hours. That would be a century. Far enough away for burial of a telltale corpse.
He remembered then the sounds he had heard in the storeroom. Morrison must have revived. Well, it wouldn't do him any good. Tarig went over to the storeroom door and unlocked it, trying to get used to the steady, shrill whistling of the vibrating Accelerator. Somehow it got on his nerves, that hideous, incessant noise.
He threw the door open and looked in. Morrison was facing him, weaving unsteadily on his feet, clutching at his splotched, bruised throat. He stared at Tarig a moment and then spoke, hoarsely and with difficulty.
"I overheard your fiendish plan," he rasped.
"Oh, yeah? So what?" Tarig sneered, and reached for him.
"One minute," objected Morrison, with what dignity he could muster. "You are a powerful brute and I can't stop you, but you'll hang for this as sure as hell. I have seen to that. Tomorrow the authorities will have the full details of it. And what's more, you'll never see Ellen Warren again, unless it is as a witness in court. Now go ahead, if you dare!"
"You bet I will, you fourflushing little shrimp!" Tarig had his heavy hand on the scientist's shoulder. He jerked him forward and hustled him out the door. He flung him down in front of the humming, screeching time machine.
"Your threats don't worry me any," Tarig blustered. "As soon as the girl friend makes the trip, you go next. After that, I'll search that storeroom. The police won't find your notes. Anyhow, it wouldn't matter. This building won't be here. I'm blowing it up behind me."
"You can't beat the game, Karl," Morrison warned again, wearily this time. "I've gotten a message through."
"Yeah!" spat Tarig. "The only telephone is down at the lodge. That was your idea—you and your privacy!"
Tarig produced a coil of insulated wire and tied Morrison hand and foot. He thought of killing him instead, but decided to wait. No harm to let him suffer a little.
"Now, my dear, dear cousin," he taunted, "I'm going to make a little package of your valuables. You are quite right about the leakage. I've been selling your platinum evaporating dishes. They are as good as gold. Ten years from now, the rest of the stuff here will come in very handy."
He sauntered off down the aisle, collecting the valuable equipment as he went, and took it to the heavy work-table in the far corner. There he battered the platinum dishes flat, and then made them into a bale and wired them together. He went through the safe and added what was there to a second bundle. He carried the bundles to the Accelerator and placed them on the floor beside it.
Time dragged. Tarig grew more and more uneasy as the machine droned on. Ellen was taking an interminable time, he thought. Suppose somebody should come in. But then, nobody ever came to this place. The sign on the gate said "Keep Out." There was Higgins, but Higgins had gone home.
At last the machine quit whistling, choked and died. It was 7:32. Tarig felt relieved. With Morrison gone, there would be no evidence against him. He hoisted the helpless scientist to his feet, shoved him into the chair. Then he stepped back and pulled out a wicked-looking clasp-knife.
"I'm going to..."
"No! You leave him be!" came the shrill, squeaky voice of Old Man Higgins.
Tarig wheeled to face the fiery old man, his eyes blazing with loyal indignation.
"You've done plenty for one night, but you ain't committed murder yet, and you better not. I've been a-watching you and I called the police more'n half an hour ago. They'll be here any time now..."
"So you were peeking in the window, you gray-headed old buzzard!" bellowed Tarig. "Well, take that, you meddling..."
HE snatched a heavy steel pestle from a quart-crushing mortar that stood on the table nearest him, hurled it with all his tremendous strength straight into the face of the senile Higgins. The old man flopped backward, splashing blood and brains. Tarig gave the body one contemptuous glance, then turned to Morrison.
"Dirty old liar," he said. "The phone line went down with the bridge in yesterday's storm."
Morrison glared at him. "The repair wagon went by about two hours ago," he managed. "But get on with your dirty work. You've committed one murder, so I know you won't stop at mine. Remember, all I ask, when they lead you to the scaffold, is that it was I who sent you there."
"Yeah? How? You wasn't near any phone," Tarig taunted.
"I had the little Accelerator model," said Morrison quietly. "I sent the news into the future."
Tarig's eyes nearly popped from his head. He dashed into the storeroom, then dashed back.
"The little model's there all right, but it's burnt out."
"Yes," said Morrison with a smile, "it is burned out."
"For a minute I thought you had me," grinned Tarig, sweating. Then his manner changed to ferocity.
"Okay—you tried! Now, let's get going."
He shoved the lever over the full sweep of the quadrant—a century forward. Then with rapid, heavy strokes of the knife, he severed the veins in both of Morrison's wrists.
"You'll set a new record for slow bleeding, Cousin Claude. What a surprise you'll be to 'em in 2040, popping out of nowhere, spouting blood this way!"
He touched the button. Morrison, bound and bleeding, went hurtling into the future. All he left behind him was an empty chair full of silvery fire, and ounces of his blood on the floor beneath. The clock said 7:44.
Tarig perched himself on a stool and watched the slow pace of the clock's hands. If time had dragged while Ellen was in the machine, it had come to a full stop now. For the more he thought things over, the more uneasy he became. From time to time he would slip off the stool and pace the floor like a caged jackal.
Ten hours for Morrison! That would take until five—no, nearly six in the morning. And then after that, he had to dispose of Higgins' body before he went himself. Damn Higgins!
Mrs. Warren would be raising hell if Ellen wasn't back by daylight. He could kill her too, of course, but that meant more delay. His plan wasn't working out so well. He would have to speed things up, somehow. He might have to cut Morrison's time down.
He tried to make the time go faster by searching the storeroom. All that was there were shelves filled with bottles and jars of rare chemicals, and a table. The first model time machine stood on the table—cold and empty. The filaments had melted down. Tarig looked for a note, but all he could find was the ragged stumps where five pages had been torn from the apparatus inventory. If Morrison had put those pages into his pocket, they were gone into the future with him.
He shrugged and gave up the search.
Then he began to think more and more about what Higgins had said. Had he telephoned? Was the phone working? It worried him to distraction.
FINALLY he could stand it no longer. He left the building, strode down the hill toward the gate. He passed Morrison's parked car, and Ellen's battered flivver. Let the cars stay where they were—he wasn't caring about them as evidence. At the gate lodge he picked up the phone and tried it. It was connected. He dropped the receiver on its hook, sat there in a panic of misgiving. Maybe the police were on the way...
"Police station, Cartersburg?" Tarig asked finally. "This is the Morrison lab..."
"Anything new?" a desk official broke in.
"Nothing to bother you about—just an old drunk. Did he call you?"
"Yes. Our men ought to be there any time now. Who are you?"
Tarig hung up, ashen-faced and shaking like a leaf. The old man had done it! He started to call back and tell the police to cancel the call, and then he realized how foolish that would be. If they were on the way—well, the damage was done. If only that bridge detour would stop them.
Shakily, he went out into the dark. Away off in the distance he thought he heard the wail of a siren. In a frenzy of fear he dashed for the laboratory.
The moment he was inside, he flipped open the switch and killed the Accelerator. Panting, he looked up at the clock. It was just nine. Already his scheme was badly bawled up, but at least Morrison's body was out of the way.
He tugged at the gory corpse of old Higgins and managed to get him into the niche in the time machine. Again he pushed the button, but this time there was a blast of light; then silence. A circuit-breaker had blown back at the main switchboard. He ran back to shove it in, and as he passed the slowly stirring batch of detonon, he remembered that he had that to attend to as well.
Sweating, Tarig stopped and killed the refrigerating machine, but left the acid and the paddles running. He allowed himself now a gloating smile for all his wild fear—he was setting a grand trap for those nosy police. Let 'em come.
But he had to get out pretty quick himself. He slapped in the circuit-breaker and ran back to the time machine. This time it started. Old Higgins, as had Morrison and Ellen Warren, vanished into the future.
But even as his hand left the button, Tarig heard fresh sounds outside. There was a car coming up the drive—several of them. He heard them crunch to a stop, and the voices of men running around the building. In a frenzy of abject fear he instantly stopped the machine, huddled himself in the seat in which he had placed his victims. There was little time left, for feet were tramping on the steps at the door now.
A coward always, he dreaded closing the switch that would fling him into the unknown. That shuddering tremble, the silver fire, the whine and whistle of it all! Yet Claude Morrison had gone through the ordeal twice, and said it didn't hurt. Still Tarig had the impulse to jump up and run away...
"Open! Open! In the name of the law!"
Tarig stared at the telltale blood on the floor. No, it was this way or the gallows! He threw the lever over all the way, and jabbed at the switch.
The lights went round in giddy circles... a thunderous hammering on the door...crashing wood panels...purple and green spots on velvety blackness...he was swelling, swelling tremendously, expanding to include all the heavens...stretching beyond all endurance, until something within him burst in a wild chaos of darting flame and stabbing flashes of unbearable light...cool, inky blackness...oblivion.
"NO, Chief, it ain't possible," State Police Sergeant Mullaney was saying. "We've searched every inch of ground for a thousand yards around. There wasn't so much as a finger. And no trails either—Sam brought out his hounds. They was all just blown to smithereens, that's how I figure it."
Deputy Inspector Hartridge glanced from Mullaney's face to the smoking ruins before him. No question but that it had been a terrific explosion. The north and west walls had borne the brunt of it and they were lying flat. For many hundreds of feet trees had been uprooted and flung away like matches. Five automobiles, thoroughly smashed, lay on their sides or tops against the remains of the Cyclone fencing.
"You had two men hurt, you say?"
"Yes, sir—they was in the cars," Mullaney said. "Nobody was in the building. We was searching the woods."
"Now let me get this straight—from the beginning." Hartridge, erect and severe, pulled out his notebook. His cold, steely eyes and high-bridged narrow nose bespoke the relentless policeman, and the thin, grim line of his tight lips did not belie the picture.
"Higgins, the caretaker, called up at four minutes past seven with an excited story about the laboratory assistant—Karl Tarig?"
Mullaney nodded.
"Said Tarig was feeding a girl into a machine. One Ellen Warren. He said it was as good as murder, or kidnapping, anyhow. Does that make sense to you?"
Mullaney scratched his head. "No, Chief, it don't. You hear cracks about knocking people into the middle of next week, but that's just foolin'. The old man meant what he said—that the machine would knock 'em into the middle of year after next or something. Kidnapping, he said..."
"M-mmm," murmured Hartridge. "A nice technical point, if true. Taking somebody where he doesn't want to go is certainly kidnapping. We might make a charge stick on that..."
"Anyhow," Mullaney went on, "we shoved off right away. It was a tough ride, but we got here about nine, surrounded the joint, and then broke in the door. There wasn't a soul inside. All we found was two machines running. We didn't dare touch 'em for fear they'd blow up in our face."
"Was this Morrison a crackpot inventor?"
"Oh, no, sir. He was a serious, hardworking guy—doped out new ways to make fancy dynamite and such. Of course, I do hear he had a queer machine he was playing with, but there's nothing screwy about the guy himself."
"Go on. You found the place empty..."
"Yes, and I mean empty. We looked. But there was blood on the floor, plenty. That was funny, too, because there was no trails leading away from it, or bodies, or anything."
"The murderer bandaged his victims up and carried them off," suggested Hartridge, looking sharply at the trooper.
"Not a chance. You see yourself, Chief, how soft the ground is all around. Even the road gravel stops at the gate. We got right out, with lamps, and began hunting. There wasn't a damn thing. If they got away at all, it was in a helicopter from off the roof."
"Yes, yes. So you were all out circling in the woods when the explosion occurred?"
"Yessir. Bam! she went, and we was all knocked cuckoo and throwed forty ways. That musta been around half-past ten. We wouldn't know. All our watches were busted."
"I'll try to pick up the time from the seismograph record in the city," said Hartridge shortly. "Then?"
"Well, by the time we came to, the place was burning to beat hell and we couldn't get near it. I phoned a nine-county alarm around, with Tarig's description. He has a record a mile long..."
"I know about Tarig," snapped Hartridge.
"And that's all," finished Mullaney.
Hartridge squinted at the ruins.
"She looks cool enough now. Get in there and comb the place. I think you missed a bet through being afraid of those machines."
Mullaney looked at him resentfully, but did not talk back.
"Okay, men," he called to his assistants, "let's go. It's four burnt torsos we want—or skulls will do."
"CLEAN as a whistle," reported Mullaney, two hours later. "It was sure a hot fire—didn't leave nothing."
Hartridge quit the report he was drawing up in the gate-lodge and looked out the now glassless windows. It was noon of a fine, calm day. Not a leaf was stirring.
"I'll have a look," he said.
They plowed through ankle-deep charred rubbish to the middle of it.
"Show me where the machines were," ordered Hartridge.
"There was a tub of stinky stuff about here," said Mullaney, at the spot where the mixing vat had stood. "It was swirling around and smoking..."
"That is what blew up," observed Hartridge, looking about him. The trunks of the fallen trees radiated from where he stood. "Now the other."
Mullaney led him to the sole standing corner of the building, and pointed out the charred and blackened stumps of the floor joists.
"It was up there—a sort of throne-chair arrangement, like in the lodge hall back at Cartersburg. There was a chair with a canopy over it and white fire playing all over it, whistling away. But nobody was in the chair, except that whoever was cut had been in it, because that was where the blood was."
Hartridge stood silently staring at the blank stone walls, then examined the ground at his feet. Among the ashes lay lumps of fused glass, masses of twisted wire, and broken slabs of slate. That was all that remained of the D-4 Accelerator.
"This junk was up there," Mullaney explained, pointing slightly upward. "But you can see there's not so much as a bone in the place. Of course, when the fellow gets here with the rakes ..."
He stopped in mid-sentence with a gasp. For at that instant a gory apparition hung in mid-air just above their heads and between them. It was a man in a cramped sitting posture, dressed in blue overalls spotted over with gouts of blood. It started falling, and with a soft plop struck the ground, sending up little eddies of ashes. The body toppled sideward. Its face was horribly obliterated, with jagged edges of skullbone jutting where cheeks and forehead had been.
"My God —Higgins—I'll be damned!" cried Mullaney. He shot a frightened look up into the still, cloudless sky. "It's a ghost..."
"Nonsense," snapped Hartridge. But the deputy inspector was nonplussed for the first time in his spectacular police career. The body was untouched by fire, its bloody, matted hair unsinged. But it was very, very dead...
"About two hours, I should say," reported the doctor, rising from the corpse.
Hartridge whistled. Where had the body been? The bloodstains were at least fifteen hours old. The explosion had occurred more than thirteen hours before. The police had been on the spot continuously.
"What's more," the doctor added, "the blood smear I scraped off the floor near where the milky brain stuff was, is the same type as his, though the blood closer to the chair is different."
He frowned. The scattered brains and blood matched that of the corpse's, but the two hours' difference between the bloodstains and the explosion didn't jibe. Hartridge's cold eyes were boring into him relentlessly. The doctor suddenly realized he was rattled.
"At least..." he started to hedge.
"Never mind," barked the inspector. "The whole thing is screwy."
He wheeled and stalked back toward the spot where the center of the explosion had been. He checked himself with a start, and passed a hand hastily across his eyes.
"Mullaney!" he roared. "Yessir!"
"Do you see what I see?"
MULLANEY gaped. Slowly drifting in the utterly dead air, several sheets of paper were being wafted down into the ashes. They could have come from nowhere, as there was no plane overhead, nor a breath of breeze. One by one they finished their lazy zigzagging and came to rest on the dead embers.
Hartridge picked them up and arranged them in the order they were marked. They were torn ledger sheets, the fine ink writing written across boldly with a heavy lead pencil. The first page bore the caption, "Urgent, For the Police." Hartridge read,
I have been assaulted and choked into insensibility by my assistant, Karl Tarig. I have regained consciousness and find I am locked in my storeroom. I can hear him making certain threats to Miss Ellen Warren outside.
The details of the plan are not clear, but it appears he means to rob me, abduct her and escape into the future. He will dispose of me by sending me still further into the future, but whether alive or dead I do not know. He also intends destroying this building behind him to cover his trail. This he can do with ease by cutting off the refrigeration of the batch of detonon now mixing. It will explode within a couple of hours.
As to his method of getting into the future, he is using an invention of mine designed to propel objects forward in time. The scale is unreliable, but an hour's exposure to the machine will cause a body to disappear for approximately ten years, after which it will materialize at the same spot.
His plan is to reappear first, after a certain number of years during which he expects his crimes to be forgotten. Then he will sell the platinum he has stolen from here, find a place to live, and be back to receive Miss Warren, who will follow him closely. That is all I know. The details depend upon the timing. According to my watch, he put her into the machine at 6:32.
Since I am to disappear also, and this building is to be blown up with all my notes and machines, the only way I can get this information to you is through a small model machine I built earlier for experimentation on small animals. Its filament is practically worn out and will burn in two as soon as it gets hot—a matter of fifteen seconds or so.
But that will be time enough. I assume that if the building does blow up during the night, you police will be on the spot to receive this note around midday tomorrow.
Do not dismiss this information as a joke because it seems to materialize out of nothing, but treat it as proof of what I have just written. Mrs. Warren—the girl's mother—can confirm the existence of the machines. I used her cat in one... I must stop. I hear Tarig coming for me...the time is 7:3—...
"It looks genuine," said Hartridge thoughtfully, folding the papers and putting them in his pocket. "As far as I can check, he certainly called his shots."
Deputy Inspector Hartridge paced the soft ground beside the ruins of the laboratory. His chin was sunk on his chest, and his hands were clasped behind his back. He was trying to make x, and y, and z, come out to a 2 and 2 that he could make 4 of. The girl was in from 6:32 to 7:30—about an hour. Ten years, more or less, for her. Higgins he could dismiss from the equation. The old man could not have occupied the machine more than a few seconds. That left three hours unaccounted for. How was it divided between the two men?
A moment's reflection told him, approximately.
"Mullaney!" Hartridge called, coming to an abrupt halt and again taking charge. The police photographer was at the moment folding up his tripod and preparing to leave.
"When the coroner is through with Higgins, let 'em bury him," Hartridge ordered. "I won't need him any more. Then you can take your men back to Cartersburg, Mullaney. You're all done—for awhile."
"Giving up, Chief?"
Hartridge stared coldly at the State police sergeant.
"Did I ever give up a case?" he demanded in steely tones. "All I want for this one is a long life—but whether I live or not, Karl Tarig will pay the penalty for this!"
"You mean you can get a guy that's disappeared without a trace, and taken the witnesses with him?"
"He's as good as on the autopsy table at the Death House now," Hartridge snapped.
TO Karl Tarig it seemed but a moment until he was opening his eyes again. He started violently, with the memory of his wild panic still fresh upon him, but instead of the pounding on the laboratory door, all he heard was the dull crash as the baled platinum sheets rolled off his lap onto the floor. Even in his blind fright his greed had not left him. Unconsciously he had grabbed up the loot as he had reached for the switch.
Then, in the distance, he heard the tap-tap-tapping of a mild gong. That was puzzling. There never had been a gong in the laboratory. And then, he realized with a start that there should be no laboratory, nor any Accelerator. That all blew up after he left. He should be out in the grass, with only some tumbled-down stone walls around.
Yet the laboratory was still there, and it was summer, with bright sunshine streaming through the windows. Except that the work benches were all gone, and in their places squatted many flat-topped glass cases filled with small objects. The place looked like a museum! And it seemed very quiet and deserted.
He glanced upward and noticed the canopy of the quartzite ovoid tube was gone. There was nothing above him. Instead of sitting on the throne-like seat of the Accelerator, he was perched on top a pedestal stool with a springy seat. It stood on a dais, two steps higher than the rest of the room, and was set off by silken ropes hung from bright brass stanchions.
There was a sign swinging from the ropes just where the steps led up, but its back side was to him and he did not know what it said. But somehow he had the uneasy feeling that he was spotted there as an exhibit —like a strange fish at the aquarium, or some oddity in an art gallery.
Tarig sprang to his feet, and as he did so, the strange tapping of the far-off bell ceased. Then the seat had sprung up and slapped him from behind. He turned and pushed it down. The bell began to ring again!
Sweat rolled from Tarig's face, and his hand shook a little. He let the seat go—the bell stopped. He jabbed it down—the bell rang again. There was a hookup here! It scared him. He felt like an animal in a trap.
He plunged forward for the steps, but banged into something he could not see. It struck him hard, and nearly knocked him out. Dazed, he put out a hand—and came up against a smooth, slick plane, hard and invisible. He was glazed in with a glass he could not see!
Savagely and with a despairing gulp, Tarig swung the heavy platinum bundle crashingly into the invisible but all too tangible barrier. Nothing happened but a swift, relentless rebound that tore the bundle from his grasp. He flung himself forward again, and groped. He was enclosed on two sides by the baffling screen. It stopped only at the stone walls behind him.
Tarig whirled and looked at them, hoping for the window he knew was not there. Then real panic seized him, a panic that made his former fears seem like mere queasiness. Staring him in the face was an imposing bronze tablet, such as is erected for memorials. The shiny raised lettering on it read:
THIS MARKS THE SITE OF
THE PIONEER TIME MACHINE
CREATED BY CLAUDE MORRISON
WHO MADE HIS FIRST SUCCESSFUL
PROLONGED FLIGHT THROUGH TIME
AUGUST 1940 to NOVEMBER 1953.
UNTIL THE APPEARANCE HERE
OF THE MURDERER KARL TARIG,
A FUGITIVE FROM THE YEAR 1940,
THIS SPACE IS RESERVED FROM THE PUBLIC.
Trapped!
Tarig's blood froze in his veins as he read those awful words. 1953! It must be after 1953, then. He had overshot his mark by at least four years. Ellen had come out before him... She must have turned him in, the wench! He should have killed her, too. He should have known you couldn't trust a woman! But Morrison? "Successful...flight," the tablet said. How could the scientist have lived? In his frenzy Tarig wheeled, wild-eyed.
A BENT old man, leaning on a stick, was looking at him. It was a mildly curious look, and unafraid, as one looks at a queer beetle stuck on a card. The old fellow had on a blue-gray uniform, such as museum guards wear. Tarig floundered against the unseen glass, blustering and bellowing, demanding to be let out. The old man wagged his head from side to side, and Tarig saw his mouthings, but through the mysterious barrier his feeble voice could not be heard.
"Don't go away, you old fool," roared Tarig, as the old fellow turned and shuffled off. "I won't hurt you. Let me out, I tell you, and I will pay you..."
But the old man ambled across the room and seated himself in an easy chair that Tarig had not noticed. And there he sat, calmly staring at the imprisoned murderer. Then a quiet grin spread across the aged features, and the old man folded his hands placidly on his skinny lap.
"Chuckle, damn you!" screamed the raging Tarig, beating at the plates he could not see. "You won't chuckle long after I—"
The door opened. Two grim-looking men, dressed exactly alike in kilted garments, stepped into the room. They wore shining metal breastplates and close-fitting steel helmets on whose crests were embossed golden eagles. Each carried a small baton with a silver knob at the end. One unlocked a metal case that hung on the wall, and pulled a switch inside. The other was standing at the foot of the steps, staring hard at Tarig. Karl Tarig knew what he was without being told—he had seen the breed before. The clothes were different, but the man was a cop—a cop of the future!
"All right, Mister, step down. The detention screen is cut. Now take it easy, because we wouldn't want to hurt you."
Tarig was as if paralyzed. He could barely manage to step down.
"Outside," jerked the other, stopping to pick up the platinum.
Tarig was pushed into the back seat of what looked to be a plane without wings. The two cops climbed in front. The paralysis was spreading through Tarig's body, freezing everything but his breathing and his heart action.
"In your day, old-timer, I guess they still used handcuffs. To save you time, I can tell you there's no way to wiggle out from under a clamp-ray. Shoot, George."
George shot. At back-whipping acceleration George sent the machine up at a fifty-degree angle, zipping through the breeze at a flat four hundred. From that moment, neither officer cast a backward glance at the prisoner. Cringing with fright, Tarig hardly saw the gorgeously landscaped countryside beneath them, or was aware when they slid down in a long dive over the outlying clusters of skyscraper mansions that skirted the great city.
It was a scant ten minutes before the machine slid to an effortless stop on the roof of some great building. Swiftly they hustled the prisoner out and into an elevator. The elevator dropped like a plummet, and the next thing Tarig knew he was being led up the aisle of an immense courtroom.
Before him, behind a raised desk, sat five solemn judges, their somber garments in strange contrast with the white and gilt of the spotless chamber. The judge in the center rose.
"Karl Tarig, you have been convicted of a number of heinous offenses..."
Convicted! It was but an hour or so, it seemed, since they were committed!
".... but before sentence is pronounced, you are entitled to know the case against you. The Chief of National Safety, Hartridge —step forward, please."
Tarig winced. He had known Hartridge from his own past criminal career.
BUT he was due for another shock.
The tall, austere man who confronted him might have been Hartridge's father, but never Hartridge. He was slightly bent, and his hair was very white.
"Tarig," began Hartridge, "you thought you were clever, but in all my career I never saw a more stupid crime, or a more futile attempt at a getaway. As it is, the evidence against you is overwhelming, and apprehending you was child's play."
"H-how?" stammered Tarig, utterly bewildered. His scheme had been so perfect!
"Your first error was in overlooking the small model machine. That enabled Dr. Morrison to send us a warning note, which arrived the next day. From that we learned of your threats to Miss Warren—another error. Your blood-thirstiness was still worse. In approximately ten minutes, we will execute you for the murder of Higgins."
"But I didn't!" screamed Tarig. Then, more defiantly, "You can't prove it—no living human..."
"We have proved it," said Hartridge quietly. He looked coldly at the prisoner, then went relentlessly on.
"We knew from the time given and the characteristics of the machine that Miss Warren would materialize first. And about when. Nine years after that fatal night, we set up a field headquarters at the scene of the crime and waited. It was not until two years after that, that she appeared, indicating the force of the Accelerator was greater than its inventor knew.
"From that circumstance, we judged it would be another two years before we could recover Dr. Morrison, but when Miss Warren told us he would probably materialize in a dying condition, we took much greater precautions. With her help we located a cot at exactly the spot where the bodies had disappeared, and posted a night and day detail of doctors.
"It was well we did, for when Dr. Morrison did appear, he was bleeding profusely from the wounds you gave him..."
"It's a lie!" howled Tarig. "This is all a third-degree. You can't..."
He choked to a stop. Hartridge, stern and granite-faced, was pointing to a man and woman standing to one side. Slowly Tarig turned his eyes to them. It was Claude Morrison, entirely unchanged, regarding him gravely—and Ellen Warren clung to his arm!
"As soon as practicable," Hartridge continued with deadly evenness, "we convened court at the spot, and tried the case..."
"I protest," whined Tarig, much of his bluster gone. "I was absent."
"Oh, no, you were not," said Hartridge. "No prisoner in the tightest possible cell was ever so definitely nailed to three dimensions. We knew to the inch where you were. The only knowledge we lacked was when you would show yourself.
"As the machine got hotter, it exercised more force, so that we only knew that at some time hereafter you would show up—but not within years of the time when. To avoid wasting our good troopers' time in a useless vigil to catch a killer like yourself, we constructed the trap you saw. It was a very simple affair—a standing detention screen, and a spring seat that would close a circuit when your weight came on it as you materialized. That circuit set off the gong which warned the caretaker, and also rang alarms in all the nearby police stations.
"It is your privilege now to hear a transcript of the testimony, if you so wish," Hartridge concluded.
Tarig looked at the sad eyes of Claude Morrison and the horror-filled ones of the girl, now grown into mature womanhood—the girl he had meant to ruin. He shuddered, and hung his head abjectly.
"Skip it," he muttered.
"It is not pleasant," remarked Hartridge dryly. He looked at the miserable, quailing figure before him with some disgust. "It is now ten years since the trial. I am an old man and ready to retire, and I am glad to say that your appearance closes the last open file on my desk."
"Take him away," somebody said, and dazed and bewildered Tarig found himself being led toward a black door marked only by a single white death's-head. It was the execution chamber of 1963!
He died, not knowing that Dr. Claude Morrison and Ellen Warren, after waiting all these years for his reappearance, would be married next day. He died twenty-three years after his last crimes, but to Karl Tarig it was only two or three hours later.
All he knew was that he died horribly because his mental anguish was indescribable. And yet there was no physical pain.
In that little gray room whose portal was the ominous black door, Karl Tarig was left all alone. There was a little chair over in a corner. Tarig slumped onto it, burying his head in his hands.
Presently he was aware of laughter, and then of an illuminated screen on the far wall as a motion picture film came to life. It was a happy picture—a scene at a ball game, with thousands of people roaring to the antics of two baseball clowns, while their teammates stood around, grinning.
Tarig groaned at the sight. Baseball had been one of the few things he took actual pleasure in...
The scene shifted then. This time there was a large restaurant, with couples dancing and waiters hurrying to the tables with trays of delicacies.
Tarig groaned again, and his stomach felt all hollow inside. The few times in his life that he had had money, he had splurged it on sumptuous dining...
The film flashed a new scene. It was a brilliant day, and under a cloudless sky sleek thoroughbred horses were racing for money and turf honors. Many thousands of gaily dressed people crowded the grandstand, while hundreds placed their bets in the pari-mutuel machines. Across from the grandstand the totalizator board chalked up the payoff for a 12-to-l shot in the previous handicap.
Tarig shuddered all over. But when the solemn voice came through the concealed loudspeaker, he broke out in a cold sweat.
"Karl Tarig," intoned that voice. "These are the pleasures of the outside world. These are the pleasures to which you are here denied, now and forever-more. You alone determined that you would break the laws of humanity; you alone decided that common decency and honest toil were for 'suckers,' as you once so loudly—and so foolishly—boasted. But you, Karl Tarig, are the sucker..."
"Stop!" Tarig screamed, rushing to the little black door and smashing his fists against the unyielding steel. "Stop, I can't stand it any longer! I was a fool... I'll never do it again... Oh God, give me just one more chance, please give me—Ohhhh!"
The little gray room was suddenly alive with a network of crackling electricity. Into every corner the sizzling white barbs reached. They enfolded Karl Tarig in deathly embrace.
Moments later the lightning ceased. The little door was jerked open by a bored guard, who knew he would see nothing. He did sneeze, however, when the draft of the opened door swirled a little mite of gray dust into the air.