The complete fiction, p.41
The Complete Fiction, page 41
Up there—in the body of the thing that came to Earth in his place—the thing that didn’t breathe.
CROSS OF MERCURX
The city that Time had forgotten . . . a house of forbidden mystery . . . a doorway where life and death were brothers . . . a story of two parallel worlds behind the streets of old New York!
CHAPTER I
THE WORLD BEYOND THE VEIL
FAINT morning light seeped through one low, cobwebbed window into the basement to dance glintingly off a fragment of mirror lying against the opposite wall. Grantley sat up stiffly on the barrel that had been his seat during his night-long vigil. Body and mind were numb, weary with puzzling over what he had seen. By daylight, the thing seemed only more fantastic. He hadn’t dozed, hadn’t dreamt it. There were his finger marks on the dusty window, where he had wiped a space clean in order to see more plainly what simply shouldn’t have been there.
Not unless there had been a masquerade ball next door last night!
But it wasn’t the sort of house that would ever see such an affair again. Decades ago, perhaps, when this was a fashionable part of New York, when Jim Fisk held high revelry at the Twenty-third Street Opera House, it had been the scene of such things. But its day was past. A gloomy two-story brick house, once red, now a smoky, weather-beaten grey, it had the familiar high stoop and barred basement windows of its type. Ruined shutters hung awry on their hinges. The windows themselves were opaque with grime, inscrutable, like eyes covered with the scale of death. A sullen and a gloomy house—such a house as Andrew Hathaway might well have chosen in which to seclude himself.
But what was the connection between Hathaway and that absurd vision, and how did Daniel Wharton’s disappearance fit in?
There was no answer as yet to either question. Grantley stood up, stretched his cramped limbs, felt of the reassuring bulk of his automatic, and wondered whether he had been a fool to come here alone, with no clue but Wharton’s letter. The scheme had seemed far more feasible back in Des Moines than it did now, faced as he was by the gloomy mystery of that silent house and the riddle of what he had seen in it during the night.
But Wharton’s disappearance shrieked for solution, and Grantley meant to solve it. Perhaps Hathaway was insane with brooding and disappointment—a not too remote possibility, considering the man’s history—and was holding Wharton a prisoner there—Daniel Wharton, inventor of the trenetone tube and a world authority on electronics, who had always treated Grantley more like a son than a laboratory assistant.
Grantley determined to get into the house even if he had to break in. If he found nothing, he could turn to the police as a last resort. If that house swallowed him, as it had perhaps swallowed Wharton and others, the envelope he had left at his hotel would be forwarded within thirty-six hours to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Leaving the cellar the way he had come, he walked through a bricked-over passage and emerged on the street. It was a lonely neighborhood, even in broad daylight. The block was one of those long ones that stretch between Manhattan’s avenues on the lower West Side, close to the Hudson waterfront. There were small empty warehouses and loft buildings, an unfenced lot, a row of tumbledown, deserted tenements. It was a lifeless street, a street of derelict houses, apparently without a single tenant. At the far end of the block an el train rattled over the gaunt structure of the Ninth Avenue line.
This was the street, and this the house named in Wharton’s last letter to Grantley. That letter was safely enclosed in the envelope Grantley had left for the F.B.I., but he knew its every word as though it had been branded into his brain.
“Dear Ralph,” Wharton had written, “I told you when leaving Des Moines that I was going to consult an old friend on my theory of neutron reaction. That was less than a half-truth, for the man I have come to see is not my friend, although his name is well known to both of us. Having never met him, I was surprised to receive his urgent invitation to visit him, and his promise to astound me with something ‘altogether beyond your boldest theories or mine’, as he put it. Today I arrived here in New York, and tomorrow I shall call on this man, who has urged me to keep my visit and his name in strictest confidence. I break that confidence in writing you because, despite all reason, I have a sense of uneasiness amounting to a premonition.
“If I have any excuse for this weakness, it is this: You know that up to the time of his disappearance I kept in close correspondence with James Fargo. We had been friends for years, and there was little that we kept from each other. But in his last letter Fargo grew mysterious, in a manner quite unlike him, and hinted that he was on the track of something new, something ‘altogether beyond your boldest theories or mine’.
“Those were his words. Could he have unconsciously culled them from such a letter as I received? Did he accept a like invitation—just before he vanished forever? A fantastic theory. And yet, Ralph, it leaves me no rest. Fargo was the fourth of us to go. What of Henderson and Minton and Franks? Minton knew more about electronics than any man alive. Henderson was working with micro X-rays when he disappeared. Franks’ work on neutron bombardment was only half finished. Only two of us remain at work along these lines—Andrew Hathaway and myself. It is Hathaway who has asked me to come here—yes, the same Hathaway, whose theory of etheric planes was treated with such brutal contempt, and who dropped out of sight completely several months ago. On this account alone I can understand his request for secrecy, and I impose it upon you in turn. Keep all that I have written confidential—unless my foolish presentiment turns out to have a basis after all, in which case you will know what to do.”
SUCH were the last recorded words of Daniel Wharton, who had walked calmly out of his hotel and never returned. But at this moment, Grantley had to confess, he was by no means sure what to do—except to knock on the door of that strange house and let events shape his course.
Windswept refuse littered the brownstone steps. Paint had flaked from the wooden door and left raw, weathered patches. Grantley knocked hard with the rusted iron knocker, the blows echoing hollowly from within. He had a fleeting sensation of being watched, but shrugged it off as imagination. After an interval he knocked again, harder.
The door gave, inching inward under the impact of his blows. He felt a keen shock of disappointment. All too obviously the unlocked door declared the house abandoned. Unless this was a trap . . .
With a hand on his gun, he entered a dark hallway. He closed the door, which had been fitted with a new and massive lock, the bolt of which was latched back. He left it so.
The hall was quite bare, with dark woodwork and stained, cracked, plaster walls. Floorboards creaked under his weight as he walked through the nearest doorway, to enter a sombre, unfurnished room overlooking the street. It held nothing but dust and the withered remnant of a Christmas wreath thumbtacked to one window frame. His footsteps echoed from the empty walls.
Through a short connecting hall he passed to the kitchen. Here were a bare wooden table and three chairs, all grey with dust. Two dingy towels hung from a rack over the sink. There were canned goods, coffee, and a set of stacked dishes in the cupboard, all apparently untouched for weeks. He walked to the stove and turned a jet. Instantly gas hissed forth.
But the next room was again empty. Its single window overlooked a rubbish-filled back lot and the rear of buildings facing the next street. A closet door stood open. Grantley walked around it and looked inside.
With a gasp of astonishment he clawed out his automatic, cursing his carelessness at being taken by surprise. But the figure in the closet never moved, and rather sheepishly he let the gun drop to his side.
This, then, was what he had seen the night before—with the difference that it was empty now, whereas then a man had worn it. Now it stood inert, a suit of milk-white armor, richly enamelled in black and gold. It was complete, even to helmet and gauntlets. Upon the breastplate was engraved a globe, above which an eagle hovered on outspread wings, bearing in its beak a square and massive cross. Grantley raised the visor on noiseless hinges. The inside of the helmet was padded with black velvet. His glance traveled downward. The leg armor and the shoes of mail were thickly spattered with dry, reddish mud.
There was a trail of muddy footsteps leading to the closet. He followed it, with the aid of matches, to the rear of the main hall and a door set under the stairway. It opened readily upon a downward flight of stairs. For thirty seconds he listened intently. The house was absolutely still. With his automatic again ready, he descended the steps. The light from above rapidly faded, but at the first landing he made out a switch and snapped it on. A small bulb glowed softly—and from above came a sharp little click.
He swung around, instantly relieved to see that it was only the door, which had apparently blown shut. Nevertheless he went back up the stairs to open it and keep his way of retreat clear. The door had no knob on this side; it was a perfectly flat surface of solid wood. He pushed against it, then laid a shoulder against it and shoved. It rattled but did not open, and the stair tread was too narrow to afford footing for any more vigorous effort.
There could be no returning the way he had come. But there should be a rear door from the cellar to the back yard. Or he might escape through that cellar window behind which he had seen the armored figure.
He ran down a second flight of steps and snapped on another bulb. There was nothing unusual about the ancient furnace, the ash cans, boxes and other cellar litter. But the window over the coal bin, open last night, was now covered with a half-inch thick steel plate locked in place.
The door leading outside was not only fastened with a heavy hasp and lock, but planked over with heavy boards. The cellar, like the stairway, was a prison.
IT WAS plain that he had been trapped, that his every step had followed a planned path. If Hathaway was mad, he had also a madman’s cunning. Silently Grantley cursed his rashness. This was the end of his “investigation”—to be caught like a fool. He could have been of more use by giving the information he held to the police.
There was a sudden creaking behind him. He swung around, the automatic ready. A four-foot section of the brick wall was swinging outward on unseen hinges. Mystery book stuff! Secret panels, and doors that locked behind you. Old, time-worn tricks that had admirably served their purpose, thanks to his carelessness. And would serve another, if and when the police followed him here. With that brick panel shut, the cellar and the house upstairs would seem deserted. Detectives wouldn’t waste much time on an empty house. The last-minute help he had counted on in case of trouble would never come.
“You will enter the wall,” said a cold voice. “Refuse, and I blast you where you stand. Drop your weapon.”
For Just a moment Grantley hesitated. He couldn’t locate the speaker, but everything that had happened to him so far showed that he had been expected. The unknown held all trumps, and there was nothing to indicate that he was only bluffing. Grantley let the automatic drop to the floor.
“Enter the wall,” repeated the voice.
It rasped across his taut nerves like a file on thin wire, but he stepped through the opening, walked through a short tunnel, rounded a corner, and came to a dead stop in astonishment.
An immense underground chamber, that must have extended far beneath the empty back lot behind the house, blazed with light. It was filled with a gleaming miscellany of great flasks and ponderous electrical machinery. Dynamos hummed upon a single monotonous note. Viscous liquids bubbled in grotesque glass containers. It was a strangely incongruous collection of equipment, the purpose of which he could not guess. Across what might have been an alcove at the far end of the room hung a beaded curtain, aglitter with that strange device of globe, eagle and cross.
“Walk forward,” came the order, and if Grantley had any thought of disobeying he abandoned it as a small, hard object was pressed against his back. Only when he stood before the curtain did that dry, contemptuous voice order a halt. Grantley turned around slowly.
The man was in his vigorous prime, and there was about him an unmistakable air of authority, of absolute mastery over others, of a will accustomed to unfailing obedience. It burned coldly in the black slits that were his eyes; it spoke in his bearing, with a tone of implacable purpose. But physically also the man was astonishing. Grantley realized with a wild quickening of heart that it was he who had worn the armor standing upstairs, that none could have worn it more fittingly.
The lean body, encased now in tight-fitting breeches of a rich black material and a jerkin of white velvet, was every inch that of a soldier. Upon the chest of the garment was embroidered the now familiar device of globe, eagle and cross. The man’s face was swarthy, with high cheek bones, a long, arched nose, and a small, smartly trimmed beard. The hair on that proud head fell to the shoulders. In every feature and lineament this man might have been a captain of the ancient Conquistadores, a Pizzaro or a Cortez.
“You are Ralph Grantley,” the man said, in unmistakably foreign accents. The weapon he held, a thing of red copper with a huge black handle, jerked impatiently until Grantley nodded. “It is well. You will give me the letter from Daniel Wharton.”
“That letter,” said Grantley, “is now on its way to the police. Within a few hours this place will be surrounded. What have you done with Wharton?”
The other’s face remained impassive. “Wharton is dead. His letter to you has served my purpose, and not his, for you were the last who might have carried on his work. Your police will find nothing—even if they come in time.”
GRANTLEY found it impossible to doubt those cold, even words. Wharton was dead—and God knew what tortures he had suffered before admitting Grantley’s existence, and the letter’s. This man had killed him, or ordered him killed—and very probably Henderson and Minton and Franks also—and even Hathaway, whose name had decoyed those others to this place. This was a man who would kill again and again to gain his ends, without compunctions, without fear or mercy. Knowing nothing else about him, Grantley was yet certain of that.
A hand felt him for weapons. That icy voice spoke again.
“You will pass through the curtain. Ondiak!”
Grantley dropped his arms. He could feel his heart beating furiously against what seemed a dead weight in his chest. Death seemed very close, and he was certain now that Wharton and the others had passed this way, through those beaded strands atremble with the vibrations of boiling flasks and screaming generators. What lay behind? Some murderous engine? A vat of acid? Or a tunnel emptying into the river? And if it was to be death after all, why not meet it here and now, where at least there was light and an enemy to throttle if he could?
His muscles tightened for a leap at the man’s throat. But that same instant there was a sound behind him. He turned halfway around, had a single swift impression of hot black eyes in a painted face, of a man gigantic, a naked red-skinned body clad only in a breech clout and copper ornaments. Then one steel-sinewed arm encircled his chest in a crushing embrace, pinning his arms from behind. The other locked under his chin. He was held like a fly, in steel forceps.
The man in white velvet loomed over him, metal gleaming in one upraised hand. Grantley struggled desperately, futilely. He gave himself up for lost as the hand fell. On his forehead blazed stinging pain.
Then the beads of the curtain swept his temples.
Behind those glassy strands shimmered nothingness—a blue-black haze, pregnant with unseen horror. He heard himself cry out as he was thrust into it. And abruptly its aspect changed. No void now, but an enormously elongated cone, a pyramid of blackness dwindling into smallness at an Infinite distance.
Suddenly the grip that held him fell away. He felt himself tumbling through space. The cone of darkness collapsed upon itself, so that he was at one instant at its peak and the next plunged into a bottomless pit whose concave walls were shrinking in upon him. As in a dream, the fall seemed endless.
Then abruptly, blindingly, the cone vanished in a noiseless explosion of brilliant white light.
He struck hard earth with stunning force, and lay there, wretched and sick, while wave upon wave of nausea rolled over him. His groping fingers felt a straw-littered earthen floor under him. Slowly his flash-blinded eyes accustomed themselves again to sight, to a dim twilight that Altered down from a great vault of stone overhead.
He lay at the bottom of a square stone tower, a structure that must once have had five or six levels, but which was now a mere shell. The broken, jagged ends of floor joists protruded here and there from the masonry. What light there was entered through a number of small, slot-like openings at various heights.
Fifteen feet above the floor on which he lay, a great circle of shimmering nothingness obscured the stones—a pit of emptiness in the solid wall. Against the opposite wall was hinged a lifted drawbridge. Behind it the lift mechanism must have been located, and a rope spanned the gap between the walls and vanished into the black haze.
Grantley stood up, found himself unhurt but for a bruise or two. The darkness, the uncertainty as to when and where he was to strike, had caused him to hit relaxed, and perhaps prevented serious injury. He struck a match and examined at closer range the walls of his curious prison. Despite their obvious age, the stones were smooth and close-fitting. He quickly gave up all hope of climbing back the way he had come. Slowly, guiding himself largely by touch, he followed the circuit of the walls. He had covered two-thirds of it when he stumbled against something soft. He lit another match.
The body was bent almost double—and it had almost ceased to be a body. Moldering bits of flesh clung still to the gaunt bones. The face was unrecognizable. A plain gold ring dangled loosely from a fleshless finger. One of the leg bones exhibited the jagged ends of a fracture. One hand, outstretched as though in desperate hope, clawed the rough surface of a stone step.
