INTRODUCTION
Joel Martin Nichols, Jr. (1895 - 1991) wrote a number of stories for Action Stories, Triple-X Magazine, Illustrated Novelets, All-Adventure Action Novels, and Weird Tales in the 1920s. For more information on his life, see: https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2011/08/joel-martin-nichols-jr.html
"The Devil-Ray" was serialized between May and July of 1926 in Weird Tales.
THE DEVIL-RAY
CHAPTER 1.
THE FLYING DEVIL OF BLENNERHOF.
Half-way down the slope a dead cow lay athwart the yellow lane, and around the carcass a group of four men were gathered. Only one of them, he who talked and gesticulated so excitedly, was dressed in the native costume of the countryside. The other three, a rather motley trio of physiques and faces, might have passed for tourists, and yet this was a territory remote from the beaten paths of travel. In other ways—in cut of clothes, in speech, in faces half concealed by low-pulled cloth caps, they did not seem to fit in with the general scene either as interested strangers or cursory wayfarers. One of them, a tall, wiry individual, whose cap visor did not wholly conceal a wide sear across his forehead, spoke impatiently, indicating the muttering peasant. "What is he saying, Lefty?"
When Lefty spoke it was in the curiously clipped phrases of an American who had lived for many years in lower New York. "He says that a devil done this; a flyin’ devil that goes over the country at night. He says he’s seen him once or twice and now he finds his cow here dead."
The third man, a short, thick-set individual, stirred uneasily and began digging nervously with the toe of his shoe in the turf near the edge of the yellow lane, his efforts sending up a small cloud of dry dust. The scarred man, who was obviously the leader of the other two, snorted derisively: "Nonsense! It’s just heart-disease, that’s all. Cows are subject to it the same as human beings. There isn’t a mark or a wound on her that I can find." His speech was clipped, terse. Nothing of Manhattan here.
"It’s funny, Mr. Ferris" — the "Mister", coming from Lefty, was curiously deferential to the younger man—"that she should happen to fall right here in this dead grass, ain’t it? I don’t suppose the grass died of heart-disease, too, did it?"
"Looky here," said the third man, who had been digging in the turf. "Here’s something else that’s had heart-trouble. " He stooped and pulled out of the turf an object which appeared to be a rough ball of grayish lint. Looking into the ball the others saw that it was a nest of field mice. They were all quite dead.
"Just the same. I’m glad I wasn’t hangin’ around these parts last night, ain’t you, Lefty?" said the short man to the digger.
"You said it, Spider," returned the other.
Ferris stirred impatiently. "Come on, let’s get out of this," he snapped. "We didn’t come up here to fiddle around with dead cows. We’ve been here a week and nothing done. We’re going to spend another night watching the castle, and tomorrow we’ll get busy making our plans to get at that villa. If we hang around here much longer people will begin to ask questions."
His comment was made well out of earshot of the peasant as they walked slowly up the hill. They did not speak again until they reached the crest, when Lefty, looking back, muttered in an undertone, "All the same I don’t like this place. I’ll be glad when we’ve pulled this job and get out. There’s something queer about this air. It ain’t healthy."
The short man said nothing, but glanced nervously behind him as he followed the others over the brow of the hill.
CHAPTER 2
CASTLE BLENNERHOF
The smoky, purplish gloom of an autumn twilight had settled over the Blennersee. The faint breath of an autumnal breeze left a parting ripple on the dull surface of the lake and rustled its way onward through the first frost-nipped leaves of the season—leaves deep blood-red and somber black with none of the brilliant yellows and golden browns with which nature is wont, to brighten the last hours of a dying summer.
In a thick copse of scrubby mountain pine growing on a small promontory overlooking the lake the three men had halted, and now they stood looking over the darkening surface of the water, their gaze absorbed not in the purple and saffron glories of the sunset on the heights above the water, but rather in the age-blackened turrets of the great castle which reared itself on a ledgelike island near the farther shore.
The last rays of the sun on the summits above them flickered and died. Simultaneously from a point three miles down the lake there came a sudden warming glow.
"That’s the villa," said the Spider, pointing with stubby forefinger toward the light. "I bet they’re gettin’ ready to sit down to chow right now. Bet that wummun is wearin’ ’bout half a ton of dem jools ready for the pickin’s."
Lefty stirred uneasily, but said nothing. Ferris either did not hear the remark or chose to ignore it. He had taken from his pocket a pair of binoculars, which he directed toward the turrets rearing into the gloom of the fast-gathering night.
"I think I see those lights in the castle again," he said suddenly. "You try the glass, Spider, and tell me what you see. My eyes may be deceiving me."
The Spider had barely brought the glasses to a focus when he started and shrank back into the thicket. "The lights again," he muttered. "I see them there in the middle tower window."
"All right," said Ferris; "stand watch there for a time while we get something to eat. Keep your eye on that opening in the wall under the drawbridge and call me if you see anything."
With the other man he went back into the thicket, where they built a small fire. They were not cold, but the village inn where they had been staying was far down in one of the valleys and they felt the lack of its cheery fireside. Perhaps an hour or two passed in desultory conversation when a voice from the edge of the lake called them back to the promontory.
"It’s that plane again, Mr. Ferris," said the Spider. "They’re bringin’ her out again tonight." Without seeming reason his voice had grown strangely hoarse. He shuddered slightly and his hand trembled as he held out the binoculars.
"All right," said Ferris, when he had taken a look; "they won’t try any flying, probably, until after midnight, same as before. We can stay here and watch them until then."
By this time Lefty was standing beside them. "It’s that plane again," said the Spider, pointing a shaky forefinger toward the castle.
Lefty shivered. It might have been the wind, which seemed to be growing rapidly chill with the advancing evening.
"Get’s cold here early," he said, half apologetically.
There was a snort from Ferris. "You’re both getting scared," he snapped, impatiently. "Both getting frightened over this fool story from a half-baked peasant. You’re both in a blue funk and ready to quit when we’ve come half-way around the world to get this stuff and we’ve nothing but a few old men and a girl between us and nearly half a million. I can’t pull this job unless I get a little co-operation from you spineless creatures. Why, damn it, men, both of you have police records in New York—you’ve both been in gun fights and tight places, and here you are, all scared pie-eyed because you sec a little dead grass and a dead cow. Evil spirits—flying devils!"
The pair opposite him stirred uneasily. It was the Spider who finally broke the silence. "Evil spirits it was or evil spirits it wasn’t. I dunno as it makes any difference. Anyways we seen the cow and you can’t get away from that. It was that plane that flew over that field, and those guys there in that castle got something which ain’t healthy for you nor me to deal with."
In his own mind Ferris had to admit that there appeared to be something in what the Spider had said. It was two nights ago, when they had been lying in the copse watching the castle, he had discovered a faint gleam from one of its towers. Soon afterward he had seen an airplane glide out from under the drawbridge and spin silently away into the night — silently because the usual roar of the exhaust had been muffled in some uncanny way.
Thereafter the castle had become an absorption with him. Their mission in this remote part of Europe was not an honest one, and the prize which they were seeking might lie either in the castle which they, until now, had supposed uninhabited, or in the villa up the lake. Yet it was the castle which fascinated him, and it was this fascination that was reflected in his less hardy companions (they admitted it to themselves) by cold, stark fear.
It may be that Ferris feared he was losing his grip on them, or perhaps it was his overweening curiosity that got the better of him; at any rate he suddenly began to peel off his coat and then bent over and began to unlace his shoes. The others eyed him in dumb wonderment.
"What you goin’ to do now, Mr. Ferris?" ventured the Spider.
"Swim to the castle," said Ferris, shortly.
There was a tense silence.
"What for?"
Ferris said nothing for several seconds, and then, finally: "Just to show you panicky old women what a lot of fools you’ve been."
The silence became somewhat painful to the two in the shadow of the thicket. There was no sound save the sharp click of Ferris’s shoelaces as he whipped them through the eyelets.
The Spider’s voice finally broke the silence. "There ain’t nobody ever goin’ to say that Spider Lang ever was scared of any man, alive or dead," he muttered. He too began removing his clothing.
Ten minutes later, shivering with the chill of night, they slid down into the water with their shirts, trousers, their automatics and Ferris’s flashlight strapped to their shoulders. Fortunately the water proved to be warmer than the air, and they struck out slowly, their white bodies scarcely perceptible in the murky waters of the Blennersee.
As Ferris swam with easy strokes he pondered on the significance of the dead cow in the open field and the airplane in the supposedly deserted castle. Had the two any connection? Was the airplane from the castle the "flying devil" the peasant had told of seeing over his fields, spraying death to plants and animals alike? If not, why was there all this secrecy with the plane at the castle? Why this midnight flying? Why the guarded glimmer from these supposedly deserted towers?
The whole question had a strange fascination for Ferris, a fascination for which even he was at a loss to account. He already had formed a theory, a theory which startled and perplexed him because its details came to him with such startling clearness. He was a strange combination: intelligent, apparently highly educated, bearing all the earmarks of at least an outward culture; and yet there was a sinister twist in his nature which during the past four years had made him one of the cleverest operatives in the history of American crime.
Four years before he had awakened one February morning in a Chicago hospital with a gash across his forehead and a split in his skull. They had to tell him what had happened. He had been standing in a Chicago hotel two nights before when a pick-pocket, sliding deft fingers into his pocket, had removed his wallet. Ferris became aware of the theft almost as soon as it was consummated and started after the thief in hot pursuit. The latter, however, had laid out his course for just such an emergency, for he slipped through a side door. This door, in keeping with the corridor wall wherein it was set, bore a heavy glass mirror, and the thief swung the door viciously back, catching Ferris across the forehead and knocking him unconscious. Escape after that was easy.
Despite the fact that his papers were gone with the wallet, a cardcase in the victim’s pocket established his identity as George Ferris. This was fortunate because, on his awakening two days later, Ferris had lost all memory of who he was or where he had come from. This, in itself, was no extraordinary thing, but the case did present one novel aspect to the surgeons. Ferris had been convalescing rapidly, regaining everything except memory, and the case was considered for the most part normal, when one day they brought him a mirror in order that he might shave himself. Scarcely had he glanced into the thing, however, when he suddenly hurled it from him with a scream of agony that startled the whole ward. Never after that could they induce him to glance into any mirror. The surgeons, discussing the matter, concluded that a pathological fear of his image had developed in some quirk of his brain. Color was lent to this theory when it was remembered that the moment before Ferris had been hurled into his abnormal state by the impact of the swinging door he must have seen his own image in the mirror before him, and that his mind had connected this image in the nerve cells of his brain with the pain and shock of the impact.
There was a second strange angle to the case, of which the surgeons were quite unaware. When Ferris was discharged from the hospital he found tightly rolled up at the bottom of his cardcase, where it had apparently escaped notice, an envelope with canceled postage addressed to Captain Lindley Fenshaw of Berkeley, California. On its back were some meaningless penciled figures. Ordinarily Ferris would have concluded he had picked the thing up somewhere to make use of as a memorandum. At that time, however, the name of Fenshaw was being blazoned from one end of the country to the other, for Frank Fenshaw, X-ray expert and electrical scientist at the University of California, had disappeared from his home nine months before under circumstances which indicated a well-planned and well-executed kidnapping. Fenshaw had not only made many discoveries and improvements with the X-ray in connection with electro-therapeutics, but had also been employed by the War Department during the World War, perfecting various electrical apparatus of a lethal nature. Hence, the government as well as the police was anxious to find the man, but a search of months had failed to reveal a single clue to his whereabouts. Eventually the search, virtually abandoned by the authorities, had been taken up by Lindley Fenshaw, American flying ace in the World War and formerly captain of the football and fencing teams at the University of California, where his father had occupied the chair of electrical science. The younger Fenshaw, -it was reported, had set out incognito, alone and unaided, in the hope of running down some trace of the missing man. Just why, a few months later, George Ferris should have found in his possession an old envelope addressed to Lindley Fenshaw was as much a mystery to Ferris as it would have been to the authorities themselves.
That Ferris did not turn the due over to the police but kept it to himself would be best understood in light of the fact that Ferris, when he discovered the letter, had no desire to meet the police for any reason whatsoever. Soon after he left the hospital, quite penniless, he discovered in himself an easy propensity for helping himself to other people’s chattels. In time he drifted to New York, where he hit upon a very profitable though somewhat precarious career. It was soon discovered that he had a pair of marvelously sensitive fingers and a very delicate ear, all of which could be put to lucrative use in twirling a steel dial and listening to the gentle click of tumblers supposedly muffled behind many thicknesses of soft felt and chrome steel. Mostly he had worked alone, but of late he had been "hired" by less gifted personages for "jobs" which contained something out of the ordinary. It was in this connection that Lefty Fritz and Spider Lang had prevailed upon him to go to Austria.
It was the old story of the Hapsburg crown jewels. The bulk of them had disappeared when the old Hapsburg monarchy had been overthrown, and it was rumored that some of the old die-hard nobility had been entrusted with their care until such time as they might be more profitably employed in putting the hapless Charles or his heir back upon the throne. Lefty, who long years ago had been a Viennese gambler, had learned through underworld channels that they had been entrusted to old Baron Von Blennerhof. The baron, according to the best subterranean information available, had carted them up to his country estates far away from the clutching hands of the new regime. This rumor was colored a bit by the fact that the baron had some time before purchased a sizable Stivers-Leemy wall safe, a somewhat rare article to be brought into that part of the country. One or two attempts had been made by the Viennese underworld gentry to test the baron’s hospitality, but as the inevitable outcome seemed to be broken heads and no jewels, the project was finally abandoned. Now it was that the American trio had determined to try its hand. So far they had done but little, merely observing the castle and the villa from a distance and trying so far as possible to learn the habits of the inmates. Thus they had concluded that aside from the dozen or so servants and guards about the place the principals were only three - the old baron himself, a fiercely bemustached Junker by the name of Von Schaang, and a young woman who appeared to be the baron’s ward. It was only the insistence of Ferris in demanding an exhaustive survey of the estate which resulted in their discovering that the castle was something more than the moss-grown pile of stones it had seemed to be.
As Ferris swam he pondered whether the jewels might not be at the castle rather than at the villa. He had planned skirting the rock on which the castle stood, thereby approaching it from the side opposite where the airplane was now visible, its black wings a dark blot against the gloomy background of the farther shore. He had purposed lying there in the water, listening to the crew’s conversation, but he was barely halfway across the lake when he began to hear their voices and the clang of an iron wrench. A moment later, while he trod water, there came a spluttering roar from the darkness. Immediately it settled down to a barely perceptible hum. Presently the plane glided out from her berth under the drawbridge, and like some huge bird of ill omen mounted gradually into the night and disappeared into the east. Scarcely a sound, save that deep-throated, muffled hum of her engines.
With the plane out of the way Ferris shifted his course and struck out for the drawbridge. A few minutes later they found themselves in a small chamber beneath the structure. At one end was a tiny dock, and by groping about they found an iron ladder leading upward into the castle.
It had been a long swim, hampered as they were with the loads on their shoulders, and for a time they clung to the slippery edge of the rock before venturing into the chill air. As they rested there, Ferris’s hand, groping about for a better purchase on the masonry, came into contact with a row of smooth, cylindrical objects, each about two feet long. By further groping he knew that they must be carefully wired to the rocks. One by one he traced their smooth, steel bellies down until he came to the conclusion there must be at least a dozen there within reach of his hand.
After they had drawn themselves out of the water and put on their clothing he took his flashlight and sent its narrow beam down into the water. It was a small, quick flash and it did not penetrate far but it showed him enough to make him whistle softly between his teeth.
The drawbridge, and perhaps the whole castle, had been carefully mined with cylindrical bombs, painstakingly wired to the ledges around its base!
CHAPTER 3
THE FACE AT THE BARRED WINDOW
THEY followed the iron ladder and crawled up through a narrow passageway into what Ferris believed to be the ancient courtyard of the castle. Here in the Stygian gloom they waited breathlessly, hoping, and yet dreading, to hear some sound that would indicate to them the whereabouts of those they knew would be their enemies. High above them towered the great battlements, their topmost turrets lost in the upper blackness of the night. The lights which they had observed from the farther shore had now disappeared. They had lost all sense of direction.
They had started groping their way about, step by step, when Ferris suddenly halted, laying a restraining hand on the arm of the trembling Spider. "Listen," he whispered. The admonition was scarcely necessary.
They listened intently. At first there came no sound save the pounding of their own hearts. And yet Ferris’s uncanny faculties had not deceived him. Gradually they became aware that the air about them was filled, not by any perceptible sound, but by a delicate throbbing, a disturbance of the ether which they sensed rather than heard.
A moment’s hesitation, and Ferris pressed on. He had taken the flashlight once more from his pocket and was carrying it in his left hand, leaving his right free for the butt of his automatic.
Suddenly in their groping they came upon a blank wall. By the smoothness of the structure under their fingers they knew it must be different from the rough-hewn stone of the castle. A moment’s further hesitation and then a small beam of light shot out from Ferris’s left hand.
Confronting them was a wall of modern brick!
Guardedly the narrow shaft of light crept down the wall. At a distance of perhaps thirty feet from where they stood they saw that this brick barrier had been mortised to one of the castle buttresses. Foot by foot the beam went back the other way. Fifteen paces beyond the point where they were standing it showed them that the wall ended. Still farther beyond that, revealed for a brief second in a kaleidoscopic gleam, was the ancient portcullis of Blennerhof with the drawbridge drawn up behind it. Ferris snapped off the light. Apparently, then, this modern structure was a sizable brick building built in the center of the courtyard.
They crept along to their left, came to the corner, rounded it cautiously. They listened. Not a sound save that peculiar faint throbbing still persisting in their consciousness.
Ferris tried the flash again and they saw themselves facing a set of sliding doors made of steel or galvanized iron. Above their heads two narrow, slitlike windows looked out into the court. The Spider had begun to recover his lost nerve, and so with a nudge on Ferris’s elbow he held out his locked hands, stirrup-wise for the latter to mount. It was an old business with them. Ferris swung up and peered through the slit. Finally he tried his flash—cautiously.
The beam found its way into the murky interior, lighting up the gleaming reflectors, the polished brass and burnished steel of what appeared to be a gigantic motor car. This modem structure, then, was nothing more nor less than a garage for this huge, steel beetle. Ferris breathed easier and whistled softly through his teeth. Small wonder visitors were not welcome to Castle Blennerhof!
Slowly, as best he could, he shot his narrow beam of light through that narrow aperture. Foot by foot his eyes wandered over the car, noting the huge, beaklike hood, the slitlike openings for the eyes of the driver, the heavily armored sides and wheels and, most of all, the heavy steel cupola on the roof. Plainly it was an armored car, but what puzzled him most of all was that the cupola contained neither rifle nor machine-gun but a high, bulging dome of heavy greenish glass approximately two feet in diameter. It might be a gigantic third headlight whose rays could be directed not only to right and left, to the front and behind, but also into the heavens.
Ferris slipped to the ground and held a whispered consultation with the Spider. Could the jewels, then, be in the castle instead of at the villa, and had this motor car been brought up into the mountains for their protection? They remembered the assertions of others that the safe must be at the villa. What use could they have had for such a huge affair as a Stivers-Leemy at the villa? Why had they not brought it to the castle if the jewels were really in the baron’s custody? Very well, he would find out.
Ferris had grown bolder with his flashlight now. By aid of its narrow shaft he found an open, iron-studded door at the foot of one of the towers. Within was an ancient stone staircase which they began to ascend. It was a circuitous climb, leading far up into the turret. In their ears still rang that subdued humming, growing slightly louder as they went up. Presently they stepped through a narrow arched doorway out upon the open battlements. Even as they did so the pale arc of the moon, rolling out for the first time beyond its clouds, threw a fitful gleam over the ancient pile. Together they peered over the parapet into the gloom below. Together they saw there something that made them both crouch hastily back within the shadow of the wall. It was several minutes before they ventured it a second time.
They saw then that the castle was in reality only a shell. Within the encircling battlements was a large interior courtyard, stone-flagged. To one side they made out a huge pile of black, lumpish material at the foot of which the dim outlines of two men were visible. From below, their ears caught the subdued clang of iron.
"Coal — or I’m a liar!" whispered the Spider. It was indeed a huge pile of anthracite.
They were aware now that the humming had become louder. Over in one comer of the courtyard a white, waving plume of steam floated out into the night, only to be lost long before it reached the upper battlements. Voices from the two men below them came up in low gutturals. One of them trundled a wheelbarrow-load of coal toward the corner, where he disappeared through a doorway. Presently they heard the clang of an iron door and the metallic rattle of a slice bar.
Ferris grunted. "Dynamos," he whispered, half to himself. It was not until then that the Spider recognized the now familiar whining hum.
For a time they watched the men at work on the coal pile, wonderingly. Ferris knew that the villa was an up-to-date affair, equipped with electric lights and other modern improvements, but he was virtually certain that the power for these was generated by a small gas engine in one of the outbuildings near the servants’ quarters. Furthermore, he knew that the humming in his ears indicated the presence of dynamos far more powerful than would be required for the needs of a mountain villa, no matter how extensive. Then, too, why was it necessary for these men to work by night? Musing thus, he crept on about the battlements until at a point ahead of him he saw a reflection of light from one of the small embrasures. They peered into it cautiously. What they saw brought another of those low whistles from Ferris.
The chamber within had apparently been built over the engine room. To one side was a short iron ladder leading up to a row’ of rheostats and other electrical paraphernalia with dials and many wheels, attached to a solid rubber slab on the wall. At the other side, jutting through the floor, were the glistening backs of two small dynamos. Between them stood the strangest apparatus of all. It was of thick, greenish glass, shaped not unlike a huge hour-glass with the upper end touching the ceiling and the lower part countersunk in the stone floor. Out of the ceiling with the upper half of the hour-glass there jutted a U-shaped bar of a black substance, apparently carbon. A similar bar was seen under the glass in the lower half. Between the two bars there oscillated a strange, purplish light. As they watched they saw it flicker and flare, now forking like a serpent’s tongue, now a solid ray of purple.
Even as they stood there watching, the head and shoulders of a man arose through an opening in the floor at the farther corner. Step by step he mounted until, crouching there as they were, with their eyes just visible over the window ledge, they could see him plainly—his upstanding crop of thick gray hair, his thin gangling figure, his curiously round and impassive face with deep-set eyes veiled behind thick-lensed glasses. He turned as he stepped out upon the floor and stooped to help a second man out of the hole.
The last comer proved to be a smooth-shaven person with haggard features and emaciated frame. Even as his face came into full view beneath the glare of the lamp overhead, the Spider felt Ferris stiffen beside him, heard him gasp as though struggling for breath. The tightening clutch of Ferris’s hand on the Spider’s sleeve sent cold shivers racing up and down the latter’s already trembling spine.
" ’S’matter?" he growled in alarm.
Ferris said nothing, but continued to peer in fascination through the window', raising his head until he must have been fully visible to those within had they chosen to look up. At times he paused, stepped back into the darkness and passed his hand over his eyes. When he pressed his face again to the window the Spider saw that there were great globules of perspiration on his forehead, though the night was increasing in coolness.
The little man fidgeted nervously. It was not his custom to question the actions of his chief, but he knew they were losing valuable time. Finally he laid his hand on Ferris’s arm only to have it flung roughly aside. Here again it was strange, for Ferris turned to the Spider and peered long and intently into his face, lit up as it was by the dim glow from the window. The Spider was no student of psychology, but there was in Ferris’s eyes something which made him panicky with fear—a certain vagueness which was alarming.
How long this went on (it seemed hours) the Spider scarcely knew. Once he thought all was lost when the second of the two men, the emaciated one, suddenly glanced up at the window. The Spider could have sworn that he had seen Ferris, and the little man’s hand flew to his automatic, his ears attuned for the cry of alarm. Instead (and the Spider could have sworn it) the man in the tower seemed to stand there for the fraction of a second, staring in fascination at the window. Was it a look of recognition? Then the man within took a step across the floor and the Spider raised his weapon. One more step— but the man had stopped. He turned away. Ah, the other had spoken to him.
From out of the east came the faint hum of airplane motors, only a subtle throb of the ether. The plane was coming back! They must be gone! As roughly as he dared, the Spider pulled Ferris from the window, and pinning him with all his strength against the wall, signaled for him to listen.
Zoom, zoom, zoom. Apparently they had cut out the silencer. And they were coming nearer. Had Ferris lost his senses? Would the fool understand? Ferris shuddered once or twice and rubbed his forehead in a vague, perplexed way.
"It’s the plane," hissed the Spider. "Are you drunk or crazy? We gotta get outta here and mighty quick!"
Ferris stiffened. His very expression seemed to change as he turned his ear to the night wind. "Gad, you’re right," he mumbled. "Why didn’t you say so before?" The Spider swore under his breath.
They retraced their steps as quietly as possible and made their way down through the tower to the courtyard. More groping—for they dared not use the light now—and they found the iron ladder leading down under the bridge to the little stone dock. There was no time to remove their clothing now, so they plunged in as they were. By this time the faint zooming from the east had grown to a deep-throated hum. The plane would be upon them before they were half-way across the lake. Yet, once out there in the water, they were reasonably safe. There was small likelihood of the midnight fliers glancing down into the waters where they were.
But what was this? Out of the murk to the east came a sudden purplish gleam! Only a faint glow at first, it grew brighter with the increasing drone of the engines. In a manner that he had never known before, Ferris felt the fingers of panic clawing at his vitals. Around him the water grew icily cold. He heard the Spider call out something from behind him. There was panic in the little man’s voice and it seemed to chain his own limbs. That had been a cry of fear—fear of the unknown. Turning his head he gazed into the east. There it was, its somber wings outlined against the scudding clouds. But now, streaming vertically down from the fuselage to the surface of the water, was a solid ray of purple light.
The plane roared on, drew nearer. Somehow, Ferris knew not why, the fear that froze his limbs now struck through to his heart. Instinctively he felt he must avoid at all costs that ray of purple. The ship, volplaning now, roared on over their heads.
It was all over in a moment. That sinister patch of purple had passed over the water between them. It had touched no part of Ferris’s body, but it had gone directly over the head and shoulders of the Spider. There was not a cry, not even a murmur. The Spider was gone!
In frantic haste Ferris swam about, calling the Spider’s name as loudly as he dared. The plane had reached the castle and the last fitful roar of its engines shut out any chance of discovery. But the Spider? Ferris swam around once more, calling his name. He dived. Nothing. He dived again, this time deeper. Down, down, down, until his lungs seemed to split within him. He could stay down no longer, so he shot to the surface, his chest bursting.
There, floating still and white beside him in the sable waters of the Blennersee he found the Spider. But the thing that made the Spider what he was, the thing which had made him different from the mud on the lake bottom; the thing which made him eat and drink and laugh and talk —that thing was gone forever. Just a touch of the purple and it had vanished!
Ferris finally managed to tow the body to the shore. There, with the help of the waiting Lefty, he pulled the little man out to the narrow beach. Together they worked on the body for two hours. Two hours of fruitless effort. Inch by inch, they went over his body, but not a mark could they find. There was no water in his lungs. He was dead, but how? The purple light? It must be!
They were men used to acting in strange emergencies, so they scraped a shallow grave on the side of the Blennersee and buried there the thing that had been the Spider. When they had finished, Lefty told Ferris that he was through. Ferris could come with him if he would or he could stay behind and play a lone hand for the jewels. As for Lefty Fritz, he’d had enough; he was through.
And so that night Lefty tramped down out of the mountain and went his way. But Ferris, having made his choice, stayed behind.
CHAPTER 4
THE GIRL
IT WAS not Ferris’s habit to attempt explanations for past experiences while there was still work to be done, and for that reason he dismissed from his mind, at least temporarily, the strange happenings at the castle and the tragic culmination of their trip across the lake. That there was some sinister connection between the incident of the dead cow in the open field and the airplane at the castle he was quite sure. Obviously the same destructive force that had slain the Spider had killed the cow and left that streak of yellow grass. But pondering was a waste of time. He made a few discreet inquiries among the peasants of the little village in the valley where he was staying, but they knew as little of Blennerhof as did he and seemed to have no thought save for those things which surrounded their own simple existence.
Ferris had had enough of the castle for the time being, so he decided to turn his attention to the villa, hoping thereby to establish beyond doubt whether the jewels were in the villa or the castle. The tiling to do, he concluded, was to learn more of the habits of the inmates. The opportunity to do this came a little sooner than he expected and in a manner that added nothing to his satisfaction.
Two days later he was strolling down the road which led from the mountains into the village, when he came upon the girl at a bend in the road. It was little more than a bridle-path hugging the cliffs on one side and dropping off into a precipice on the other. Just what had happened before he rounded the corner Ferris had no way of telling, but it must have been an altercation of some sort for he was just in time to see her raise her riding whip and cut it sharply across her companion’s face. It was the baron’s ward, and she had struck the big German whom the natives knew only under the name of Colonel Von Schaang. Then, wheeling her animal, she dashed up the narrow path toward Ferris while the man, his face livid with anger, spurred on behind.
There had been a slight frost the night before, but the morning sun had already thawed the surface of the ground, leaving a thin smear of slippery mud. Whether, owing to the earliness of the season, she had neglected to have her mount shod, or whether the sharp curve was too much for him, would be hard to say. Ferris, who had dodged behind a shrub in the hope of remaining undiscovered, saw the beast’s hind legs slip out from under him, throwing his head against the pebbled cliff. Some of the gravel and stones brought down by the brushing impact must have frightened him, for he began rearing and plunging madly, drawing ever nearer to the chasm which yawned on the other side of the path.
The livid rage on the face of her pursuer turned to ashen fear when he saw her impending danger. He leaped from his own horse, then stood as if rooted with terror.
Ferris’s photographic mind had registered every detail of the proceeding. Realizing instantly that the animal had been maddened by the plunge of sand and gravel about his ears and eyes and that the next moment might see horse and rider toppling over the precipice, the American rushed forward and seized the bridle. He had forgotten that his principal object in life during the past few weeks had been to keep out of sight of just these people.
"Loose the rein!" he shouted to her as the horse tried to rear and strike at him. He saw that in her terror she was pulling back with all her strength on the heavy Spanish bit, forcing the sharp steel deeper and deeper into the beast’s sensitive mouth. Blood-flecked foam spattered over him.
She seemed not to hear him. Horse and rider edged nearer the chasm. Another backward plunge like the last, and both of them would be over the cliff. Seeing that she was powerless to act, Ferris dropped his hold on the rein and leaped to her stirrup, seizing her about the waist. With his free hand he pulled the leather from her nerveless fingers. She had fainted—luckily. But would her left foot become entangled in the stirrup before he could drag her clear? Even now the beast was toppling on the brink! Thank God, her foot had come free! Ferris threw his body backward with all his strength, to find himself staggering and swaying over the abyss. Even as he regained his balance a reddish bulk struck the rocks far below. There was a thud which even he could hear—the horse kicked once, and lay still.
Strangely nauseated, Ferris stumbled across the pathway and placed the girl down against the cliff. The dark masses of her hair had slipped out from under her hat, framing her bloodless face in soft outline. He was just about to prop up her head with his coat, preparatory to chafing her hands, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He had forgotten the presence of the man, Von Schaang, though his mind still bore the picture of him hesitating there in the background while her life trembled in the balance. Oddly enough, he paid no attention, shook off the hand and without so much as a glance upward began to chafe the woman’s wrists.
The hand on his shoulder tightened, tried to twist him roughly about. At the same instant he felt the sharp sting of a riding whip across his shoulders. He turned on the instant and glanced up. The startled look on the colonel’s face told Ferris he had been recognized at once as an outlander. Even as the two men faced each other, one crouching, the other standing, the colonel’s hand moved swiftly to his hip. Ferris knew he must move quickly, and move quickly he did. In one motion he let the girl’s head sink back against the coat, and with but a slight shift of his legs he sprang at Von Schaang. The dull impact, of his fist on the chin of the German and the clatter of a blue steel automatic on the hard gravel of the path came almost as one. Von Schaang’s knees wobbled and he sank heavily to the ground. With scarcely a second look at him Ferris picked up the pistol, glanced at it contemptuously and then tossed it over the cliff. Without further ado he turned his attention to the girl.
He found a spring near by and dashed some of the water into her face. Slowly the color came back into her face and she moved her head into the hollow of his arm. An idle breeze fanned the loose strands of her hair across his cheek, the subtle perfume of it filtering through his nostrils and sending the blood pounding through his brain. Another sigh, a flutter of the long lashes, and she looked up into his eyes. The first dazed look of incomprehension shaded to one of startled bewilderment. She said something to him in a tongue he did not understand.
"You’ll be all right in a moment," he ventured, in English.
Her eyes opened in amazement and then something akin to fear. "You are American?" she asked. He knew by her accent that she must be very familiar with English as spoken in his country.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded. And then she saw the prostrate form of Von Schaang. "Have you killed him! Is he dead?"
Ferris shook his head, smiling. "No such luck," he said. "Just tapped him on the chin. He hit me with his riding whip and then when he saw I wasn’t a peasant, he reached for his gun. I had to do something, you know," half apologetically.
She got up and moved toward Ferris, clutching his sleeve. "It would have been better had you killed him —better for all of us. Oh, I wish I might have gone over that cliff with poor Rollo! But you can’t stay here. See, he’s stirring a little. I’m afraid —I’m afraid when he comes to himself-"
Ferris misunderstood her; His eyes had narrowed to small slits and he felt the blood pounding through his temples, felt the throb of a hate he did not understand. "Madam," he said, "there is no need for you to fear him longer. A little push over the cliff and he’ll be down there with your horse." His short metallic laugh rang out in the stillness. The coldness of it caused her to draw away from him. She looked again into his face and gave a low cry. Even as her lips parted he turned from her and strode toward the helpless German. Through the blur in his eyes he saw that all the world was red.
"Red—red—red," he muttered. "God, how my head throbs! Everything red. I ought to kill him. I’ve got to kill him."
He had not gone half the distance to the prostrate man when a small, white-faced fury hurled itself against him. Through the red film which seemed to smother him he felt the clutch of her fingers on his arm. "Red—red—red," he muttered.
"Are you mad?" he heard her cry. "Would you murder a helpless man?" The red film gathered tighter about his throat, choking, smothering. He brushed her aside. Two more steps and he stood over the German, his fingers opening and shutting convulsively. Even as he reached down to grasp him, he felt the cold muzzle of a pistol pressing against his temple. Her voice, now clear and calm, rang in his ears.
"If you touch him, I’ll kill you!"
Just as a delicately regulated pump begins working automatically when the water reaches a certain level, so the hair-trigger instincts of the American telegraphed to every nerve center of his body that another step toward that recumbent figure would mean his end.
He paused, straightened up. The red, choking film seemed to melt away before his eyes. That tight strangling sensation at his neck loosened. He backed away, startled at the burning scorn in her eyes. He heard her low voice—miles away.
"It would be better, perhaps, for all of us if this—this man were dead," she was saying, "but I cannot see him killed in cold blood. It is best that you go now, before he awakes. I can promise you there will be two of us against you then."
The red had gone entirely now. The throb in his brain, the throb across that scar on his forehead, was passing. He felt a great shame, an all-absorbing desire to slink away. And so, while she was bending over the other man, he hastened around the corner and down the slope, the fresh morning air fanning to dryness the great beads of perspiration which had arisen on his brow.
CHAPTER 5
A LONE HAND
An early autumn thunderstorm, an uncommon thing in those mountains, had piled its black warning into the sky as the afternoon wore on. Ferris in his room at the inn sat with his head buried in his arms. Of the distant peals of thunder, the glowering twilight that presaged the storm, he was oblivious. At a quarter after 5 a servant brought in a candle and stirred the fire. For only a minute or two its flicker threw grotesque shadows on the wall and then died low. Ferris did not seem to notice the coldness of the room.
Two hours later the servant, re-entering with his victuals, found the American still musing. By this time fitful gusts of wind were tearing at the shutters and whistling among the gables. Livid flashes of lightning threw pallid gleams into the murky interior. Again the man stirred the fire and again it leaped into the chimney, seemingly angry at being thus disturbed. A moment later it had subsided to a dull, sulky glow beneath a covering of half-burned wood and somber ashes.
On the heels of a heavier crash than usual, one of the wooden shutters suddenly flung open, letting in a swish of rain and a riot of galloping wind. The candle on the table flickered and died, its feeble gleams dwarfed to insignificance by the blue flare which flooded the room from the open window. Before he could control himself, Ferris was on his feet in the far comer of the room, his fingers clutching the cold butt of his automatic, his eyes glaring in the direction of the swinging shutter. But there was nothing but wind and rain.
"Nerves, nerves," he muttered. "Losing my nerve at this stage." He pressed the tips of his fingers together, felt them tremble with the throb of his heart and the twitch of tensed muscles. "Couldn’t roll a tumbler tonight with these fingers," he murmured.
He strode to the table and took a long draft of the wine. It seemed to brace him. He walked to the window. The whirling torrent had subsided for the moment. He gazed out into the night, heard the galloping thunder of the storm out beyond in the smother of darkness. A light flickered here and there in the village. A wild night for even these hardy peasants. He pulled the shutters together, then he lit the candle with a lighted sliver of wood from the fireplace, sensing inwardly that the sullen, glowing embers hated to yield even this tiny flame. As he turned away they lashed out at him in unwonted brightness. He started, stepped back, cursed himself for a fear-bitten fool. A fat pine-knot suddenly breaking into flame—that was all.
"Nerves, nerves," he muttered.
Presently he drew up his chair to the fireplace and slumped into its hard depths. Sleep he would have welcomed, but the uncanny rattle of windy fingers snatching at the shutters kept him wide-eyed. Ever and anon he turned about in his chair and peered into the room behind him, scorning himself inwardly for his lack of self-control.
At 11:30 by his watch he arose, went to his portmanteau and drew from it a thin woolen sweater, a pair of rubber-soled shoes, a flashlight and a thin bar of steel, hammered down to the thickness of a wafer at either end. In a few minutes he had changed his shoes and pulled on the sweater. In the outer pocket of a waterproof coat which he put on he placed his automatic; in the other was the bar of steel, a blackjack, and the flashlight. After all this was done, he shot the ponderous iron bolt in the door leading from the chamber and extinguished the candle. A moment’s careful peering through a crack in the shutter before he opened it, and then the five foot drop to the ground outside. In ten minutes he had left the village behind and was well on his way into the hills.
CHAPTER 6
THE MIRRORS OF VILLA BLENNERHOF
Ferris stumbled up the last slope to a promontory overlooking the lake. Here he paused for a moment, watching the towers of the castle, all but indiscernible now through the gloom and murk that hovered over the waters. The castle had always fascinated him, even more than did the jewels within the villa. Even now as he watched it he fancied he caught the gleam of dancing lights about the gloomy battlements.
But there was other and sterner work to be done, so he turned his footsteps toward the villa just beyond. The place was in absolute darkness. He feared for a time that the hounds in the kennels at the rear would hear and awaken the caretakers and servants, who were housed in an adjacent building, but the rush and swirl of wind and rain, the almost incessant peals of thunder, drowned under an avalanche of sound the soft tread of his rubber-soled feet across the gravel.
With expertness he chose one of the lower windows, and pulled himself up to the narrow ledge by the sheer power of his steel-springed wrists and fingers. Clinging there on his precarious perch, he inserted the jimmy beneath the window sash and with gradually increasing pressure forced it upward. It gave with a metallic click, audible even above the storm. He waited a moment, crouching there in the darkness, knowing it must have been heard within should any remain awake.
A glittering flash of lightning lit up for a brief moment the polished furniture and gleaming tableware within. It was the dining room, then. Very good. He swung his feet inside and slid noiselessly to the floor. With this movement, his pistol butt, protruding from his pocket, caught on the window ledge, and the weapon fell out into the night. He debated with himself whether he should go back and risk the chance of being heard by the hounds, but thought better of it and closed the window softly behind him.
Out of his long experience he had concluded that the safe, being cylindrical, would have been concealed within one of the walls. There was small likelihood of its being in the dining room, so he crept cautiously across the floor to the open doorway, his flashlight made unnecessary by the bluish flares of lightning which lit up the interior at every third step. He crossed the hallway carefully on his hands and knees and found himself in what he took to be a drawing room. The shades had been partly drawn, so he took out the flashlight and let a guarded beam shoot across the room to the opposite wall. He had only to search a little when he realized with a propitious pounding of his heart that he had found it. Long experience under similar circumstances told him that behind that peculiarly hung picture and drapery was the little polished knob he had been seeking.
Scarcely glancing about him he hastened across the floor, stumbling as he did so on an intervening chair. The subdued clatter of it he ignored. Was there not already enough sound in the air to muffle all else?
He reached the picture and groped around it until he discovered the spring that released it. As it swung outward he thrust his hand behind and felt, with a glow of satisfaction, the small round knob. Then carefully stuffing his left ear with cotton, he laid his right close to the small steel door and began to twirl the nickeled disk. It clicked once and he twirled the other way. A second tiny impact within told him it had clicked again. The gods were indeed favorable. The disturbing nervousness of the afternoon was gone; his hand was as steady as a rock, his hearing well-nigh perfect.
Had his hearing been a trifle better he would have heard the girl as her satin-shod feet came down the great staircase in the hall. At the foot she paused and reached for a button on the wall. A slight click and the great chandeliers above him poured down a flood of rose-colored light.
Ferris sprang to his feet, his hand moving instinctively to his hip. It never reached there. He never even saw her. Instead, he found himself glaring into a heavy pier-glass hanging close at his left hand. From head to foot it reflected his image, his crouching hunched shoulders, his face, white, haggard. Eyes drawn to pinpoints glared back at him, seemed to enlarge, to engulf him. A livid flash from the storm without threw his features into bold relief.
A choking, struggling cry, a spasmodic shudder, and he had sunk to the floor. Just a bundle of limp flesh and inert muscle. He held his hand before his eyes trying to shut out the light. Then something seemed to snap in his brain, he felt himself hurtling through miles of black space. Out of the night faces danced and mocked him, waved at him in derision—then faded mercifully away. He closed his eyes in welcome oblivion.
The girl gave a little low cry and hurried to him, found him limp and shuddering on the floor. She raised his head, placed it on the silken lap of her night-robe. He opened his eyes.
"This — this," he murmured-; "what’s all this? Where—where am I? Who are you?"
She looked at him intently, thinking he might be feigning. But what need was there for feigning? She was a woman, helpless; he was a man, powerful. She knew that. And then his eyes. They were not the same bloodshot orbs she had looked into on the cliff that morning. She began to understand a little.
"You are at Villa Blennerhof," she said, soothingly. "I suppose it was the jewels? You were not the first to try. But they are gone—weeks ago. Rest quietly now for a moment and you’ll be all right."
"No, no, no!" he cried. "I must be out of here! Father, father, where is father? God, I don’t know why I came here! What day of the week is it? Saturday? Then I have been here since, since-" He paused, a look of half-understanding coming into his eyes. "Yes, I remember now, I was chasing a thief—somewhere. There was a crash—but what month is it? February?"
"It is October," she answered, quietly.
"October?"
"It is October—it is October, 1926."
He groaned and hid his face in his hands. "I guess—I guess I understand—now," he exclaimed. "I’m mighty sorry—sorry to have disturbed you in this way. Can’t— won’t attempt to give any explanation. But you said this place is—is Blennerhof? Where is Blennerhof?"
"Austria," she answered.
He might have cried out again but he only shook has head. "Poor father, " he murmured. "I guess I’m too late now. Five years—five years!"
"Try to rest quietly," she admonished. "You’ll make yourself ill."
He started to sit down in the chair she had offered him, when he stopped and put his hand over his eyes. "And yet," he said, slowly, "and yet I saw him, saw him not three days ago. Saw him somewhere behind a barred window. Is my brain still playing tricks on me! But no—he was there. Let me think a moment." He sat down and buried his head in his arms. "Yes, it comes back to me a little now. Just as sure of it as I sit here looking at you, I saw him not two days ago. There was—there was somewhere—a purple light-"
He did not notice how she paled.
"There was a purple light—we were swimming in black water. That light—it swept over us. The—the Spider went down."
She laid a trembling hand on his arm. "Tell me," she said, "was there a purple light and a castle?"
"Yes, yes!" he answered. "That was it. A purple flare. I saw it. It killed him."
"Oh God!" she cried; "then it must be true! And I thought Von Schaang lied. But, no, no, no—it is impossible, he must have lied-"
He started to get up. He had not heard her. "I must be getting out of here," he said. "There is no time to be lost. In which- direction lies this castle?"
He felt her hand clutch his. "Listen," she whispered.
The wind and rain without seemed to hold up in hushed expectation. As he listened he heard the faint purr of a heavy motor swinging along the road near the lake. For a moment the faint yet powerful drumming filled the air and then died away amid a renewed roar of the dements.
Her face blanched and she made as if to step toward the stairs. At that moment they heard a door in the vestibule open and slam shut. Again he felt her fingers on his arm, felt the terror trembling through them.
"It must be Colonel Von Schaang," she whispered. "He and Baron Blennerhof were to have gone down to Haverbrouck before the storm, but they must have deceived me. I know his step. I have forbidden him this house. He is here to no good purpose. Quick! He must not find you here!"
For a moment he hesitated, still in doubt. Suppose she were to betray him. Was this a trick?
"Listen," he whispered. "I am Lindley Fenshaw, the son of the man they have imprisoned at the castle. If they know who I am they will no doubt move heaven and earth to kill me. And if this is a trick of yours— why should I trust you? You may be one with them."
"For God’s sake, go!" she answered in a panic. "Have you not guessed it yet? I am as much American as you are. My father was of Austrian birth, a nephew of Baron Blennerhof. He left his home in America and went back to fight for Austria against the Russians. He was killed. My mother was a nurse —she was killed behind the American lines in a bombing raid. Is that not enough? Can you not trust me? Quick, he is coming!"
Somehow, he believed her, and yet he hesitated. From the corridor beyond they heard the swish of water-proofs and the thump of heavy boots. "Quick," she whispered; "there is no time for you to go now. Behind this portière."
She had just time to thrust him behind the hanging when the burly figure of Von Schaang entered the room. He had discarded his hat. His face was flushed with excitement. The woman drew herself together with a supreme effort of the will.
"You call at an unseemly hour, my lord," she said in English.
He ignored the remark, seemed not to hear. "Ah, you await me!" he cried, his face flushing with obvious gratification. " It is even as the great masters have said—in the hour of victory—the warrior—the woman-"
"You will leave the villa immediately." Her cool, clear tones cut across his with the sharpness of steel.
He shrugged, his shoulders, deprecatingly. "You are inhospitable, Fräulein. I had come to accept your congratulations for a work well done. You are the first woman in the world to know what has happened this night."
Lindley Fenshaw felt her tremble through the curtain.
"Before the dawn our hour will have struck," the German continued. "Within twenty-four hours we shall have arisen out of the dust. We shall send the rest of the world to its knees. Ah—but now it will be worse than before. They have taught us how not to be lenient."
As he raised his arm she saw that under his coat he was in full uniform with his decorations. "His Imperial Highness," he continued proudly, "meets the baron at dawn. Ah, the fools, the fools! They let him out of exile because they believed him harmless! Harmless!" His laugh rang out in the room.
"It is a monarchist uprising, then?" she gasped.
He laughed again. "An uprising if you will, Fräulein Reinhardt." Then coming a step nearer so that she could see the glint in his eyes: "But what an uprising! The nobility of three nations! Monday’s sunset will see these republican swine strewing the streets of three cities. Three days more will see us in Paris! Two more, in England! A week beyond that and America will be at our feet!"
Her lip curled. She was fighting for time. "My lord has been overlong at the wine, I fear. And the means of all this victory?"
He bent toward her so that even Lindley, behind the hanging, could hear the hiss of his breath. "You scoffed when I told you before," he said, "but now you shall see for yourself. It is the Leipische ray—the light of vengeance — the purple death!"
"You lie." Again her tones cut across his.
He laughed sardonically. "Tomorrow, then, shall prove it to you. We have had it perfected for weeks. We have tried it out on the lake and over the fields while others slept. It kills as it touches. Neither man nor beast nor plant can stand before it. We have unleashed the very fires of hell. And the American—these fool Americans can thank their compatriot, the great Fenshaw, for placing in the hands of their enemies that which will destroy them. Not half an hour ago the baron and Dr. Leipische went southward carrying the apparatus in an especially designed car."
There was a stir behind the curtain, and she gave a little cry, but the colonel did not notice it. She was beautiful to him, standing there under the rose-colored light from the chandeliers. She was his. He had been promised it. Why hesitate?
Even as he reached for her, the curtain was thrust aside and Lindley Fenshaw stood before him.
Von Schaang, with an oath of astonishment, reached for his pistol, but as he raised the weapon Lindley struck it from his hand. There was a flash of blue steel, the crash of breaking glass, and they heard it clatter to the ground outside the window.
They were facing each other with nothing but their hands.
Hatred had chased the lines of lust from the colonel’s features. The girl backed away and the two men began to circle warily. The German did not rush in as his heavier and stronger frame would have warranted. Instead he backed away toward the wall. Lindley wondered if he were trying to reach the door and was about to ward him off accordingly when the girl behind him cried out a warning.
"The sword on the wall! He’s after it!"
The warning had come a second too late. On the very instant of it Von Schaang, without taking his eyes from the American’s face, reached up behind him and snatched from its bracket on the wall a heavy rapier. It was a stout blade with a strong basket handle, a relic of cavalier days. He gripped it tightly and approached the American.
"One of you more or less will make very little difference," the German snarled. "I know not how you came here but I know how you will leave. And by heaven, she shall pay for this! Violence with women has ever been repugnant to me, but she shall pay for this."
Lindley’s fingers had closed on one of the chairs. It was the lightest one in the room but it was too heavy for a weapon which must be swung swiftly and lightly. Behind him the girl had slipped out of a door into the adjacent library. Without taking his eyes from Von Schaang’s face.
Lindley’s other hand tightened on the chair back. Von Schaang feinted with his blade and the chair crashed against the wall beside him. He had avoided it easily. The American would have followed it, hoping to break through the colonel’s guard, but just as he was about to spring he felt the girl’s hand on his arm, felt the handle of another blade pressed into his hand. By the weight of it he knew immediately that it was one similar to that in the hands of the German.
The colonel smiled sarcastically. "It will delay the reckoning but a little while," he sneered. "A green American!"
They went at it under the rose light of the chandeliers.
Von Schaang’s scarred face told Lindley that he was up against an experienced swordsman. He wondered if his skill in college fencing would stand by him now. The first clash gave him courage. He had not forgotten, at least, how to engage his opponent. But this was a deadly business, with no padded vests and protected throats to ward off the lunges.
The German feinted and lunged, slipping his blade around the point of the other, hoping to drive it home. It was parried, the American slipping easily out of the way. Von Schaang was surprized. He had expected to end the fight with that. Instead it was avoided, and he was sore put to it in pulling his heavy frame out of the path of a return thrust as deadly as his own. The clash of the steels told him he had met a wrist as strong and as supple as the best. Again he was obliged to avoid a thrust that, had it gone home, would have been his undoing.
The girl stood a little to one side, her face bloodless now. Once she thought Lindley gone and she gave a little half-smothered scream. But he had only stumbled on the edge of a rug. He was up again, following the German's lunge with a strong parry.
Four, five, six minutes passed.
Von Schaang’s breath was coming now in short gasps. Over his right breast there was a widening smudge of scarlet soaking through the gray of his-tunic and dulling the gleam of his decorations. For Lindley there was a small trickle under the left arm, less obvious because of the somber hue of his woolen jersey. He realized, now, that this was to be a game of endurance. They were too evenly matched. This must go on until one of them, a trifle weak from loss of blood, would raise his blade a fraction of a second too late. Then-
He began to wonder which of them it would be. Once or twice in their circling he caught sight of that white, appealing face in the background. He read the fear and anguish there and his heart cried out for her. Once when he stumbled on the rug he saw her cover her face with her hands. But he was up again. A moment later, while he carried the fight to another corner of the room he saw her step out and drag the rug out of the way. Gad, he thought, she surely was a thoroughbred.
But could he last? It had been many years since he had touched the foils, and then it had been only in sport. Von Schaang, he knew, must have been an experienced duelist with a reputation. The scars on his face told that. And the stakes for both of them were tremendous. His own father was imprisoned somewhere in the castle. For what reason? His contributions to science? His researches with the X-ray? Had his father given these men something which had made possible this new and terrible engine of destruction, this devil-ray? He knew that there had been fear among the nations that one or the other of them would hit upon the thing. It had been only a question of time and research. Had his father made this possible? Von Schaang had said it. But how could they halve wrested this secret from his father? Torture? Perhaps. Yet he could not believe that his father would have consciously succumbed to any coercion. If he had given it to them they must have tricked him into it!
The thought of it enraged him, gave him new strength. He believed them capable of it—torture. And now they had the purple ray. Back to him came that murky scene in the lake, the whirring airplane overhead, the purple splotch on the waters, the still, dead face of the Spider. Von Schaang must be speaking the truth! And now they who had it were speeding away into the night ready to strike at the given hour. Had he not heard the purr of heavy motors as they went down the road on their terrible mission? It had been that giant car he had seen in the castle. Bit by bit, while he fought, he pieced the thing together as it came back to him. God, what was he to do? Kill the German! He must do that for the girl, if nothing else. After that, Armageddon!
The thin trickle of scarlet under his arm had weakened him. He was parrying those glittering thrusts with increasing difficulty. One of them, turned aside a moment too late, would mean his end. He gritted his teeth. He was going on his nerve now. This endless thrusting and lunging! God, would it never end? There was a mist gathering before his eyes. Dimly through it he saw the colonel with his free hand wipe a fleck of white foam from his lips. His blood-soaked sleeve left a red smudge across his cheek. He had become a fighting, foaming beast.
Had Lindley been nearer, had his vision been a little clearer, he would have seen that Von Schaang’s eyes were glassy with exhaustion. He would have heard the hoarse whistle of the German’s breath between his teeth; for him it was nearing the end, he knew it. But Von Schaang would not die thus! Not he! He measured the distance to the chandeliers with his eye. There were three of them, separated by several feet and high in the ceiling. No one blow could extinguish them all. Ah yes—that little black button in the wall! One turn of that, and the room would be in darkness. Then a window—and safety.
Von Schaang edged toward the wall, permitting himself to be driven slowly backward. With one foot he kicked an intervening chair aside. Would this fiendish American notice his purpose ? Apparently he did not. Just one backward step and Von Schaang could reach the button with his hand.
With the last bit of his strength he rallied and drove Lindley back. A few steps between them were necessary to give him time for his lunge toward the window. Desperately he struck at the American and then, turning swiftly, sprang toward the button.
There was a sharp click. The girl screamed. The room was submerged in darkness.
Lindley, without knowing just why he did it, shifted his weapon and drove it spear-wise into the darkness where he had last seen the German.
There was a dull impact—a loud groan. Another cry from the girl. Even as he stood there, swaying, a beam of moonlight, released for the moment by the dispersing clouds without, shone through the French window opposite. It cut a clear pathway across the floor to the opposite wall. As they stood there, the man and the girl, they saw the heavy bulk of Von Schaang sink slowly to the floor. Under his left shoulder the handle of Lindley’s blade wobbled in horrid grotesqueness. That last despairing lunge had found its mark.
As Lindley watched in fascination, the night about him grew blacker and blacker, engulfed him in its sable folds. He did not hear her cry out as she hurried through the gloom toward him nor did he see how, with her hand over her eyes to shut out the sight, she forced herself to step over that still figure near the switch and turn the rose-colored flood back into the chandeliers.
Colonel Von Schaang’s lips moved slightly.
"You are too late!" he croaked, his mouth trying to form a malicious grin. "The purple ray is already on its way to his Imperial Highness. The armored car left nearly an hour ago."
A stifled rattle of the throat, and he was dead.
CHAPTER 7
THE MAN IN THE TOWER
LINDLEY awoke with his head in the girl’s arms. She had procured a strip of linen from somewhere and had bound up the cut in his side.
"You are weak," said said; "you must rest."
The sweet perfume from her clothing soothed him. He would have sunk back again in welcome oblivion but there came to him, more sharply now, the memory of the gray-haired man in the turret of Blennerhof.
"My father," he said, pulling away from the girl and dragging himself to his feet. "I can not wait here. The castle—where is it?"
She led him to the window. The storm had subsided. Only a few scudding clouds effaced the moon. She pointed down the lake to where, more eery now than before under the wan light, Blennerhof thrust its five gloomy turrets into the sky.
"If you trust me, now," she said, "I will go with you."
He looked at her, noted the light in her eyes. "I never really doubted you," he said, "but I was nervous and I could not afford to lose. It is not for myself. Come, we will go. "
She was but a moment in donning some extra clothing, and together they hurried from the villa into the roadway. He had paused only long enough to pick up the German’s pistol under the window, and then they crept out and down the road, trembling lest at this last moment they be discovered by the servants in the quarters at the rear.
In twenty minutes, though it seemed as many hours to him, they were at the castle.
"The drawbridge is all the way down," she whispered. "I have never seen it thus before. But then— they never would let me go near the place. They said it was old and the walls might fall."
They hurried over the bridge and into the somber courtyard.
Two doors yawned emptily before them. The great steel car was gone! Von Schaang had not boasted without truth.
Lindley paused in the center of the courtyard, buried in thought. "Yes," he said finally, "I am sure that I have been here before. I remember there was a great armored car in there and then we found a stairway somewhere and went up into one of the turrets. It seems to me now that it was on the left."
They hurried over to the nearest turret and found a low oaken door heavily studded with iron. It was partly open and creaked ominously as ho swung it farther back. He snapped off his flashlight and they waited there in the darkness, their hearts pounding with fear. Had they been heard? Prom above there came no sound save the moan of the wind among the battlements, weird music intermingling uncannily with the murmur of the waters in the moat below. The place seemed as empty
He paused with one foot on the stairs. "I can not let you go up here," he said. "There is sure to be someone there, and I shall have to fight. I—I’m sorry that I brought you thus far. Will you go back and wait for me on the shore? If I do not come back within a few minutes you will know that I-"
She laid her hand on his arm. "I am going with you," she answered with quiet finality. Had it not been for the pitchy blackness perhaps he would have noticed that she swayed a little toward him. And so they crept up the stairs together.
At the parapet above, Lindley leaned cautiously over. He waited for the moon, effaced for the moment by a fleeting cloud, to throw its light into the castle. The greenish light came —vanished. Yet in that quick interval he saw the pile of coal, still wet and glistening from the rain. He saw beside it the two small barrows. But the waving plume of steam from the exhaust in the far comer was gone. There came now no drone of dynamos from the tiny powerhouse beyond.
They had gone, indeed! Their work here was finished.
And yet the silent emptiness of it gave him some grain of comfort. He had found the stairs, the turret, the coal—everything as it had been in his dream. Then it had not been a dream after all. If he could find the barred window wherein he had seen the dials and the two workmen he would then believe that he had in reality seen his father.
They found the embrasure at last— just where he had placed it in his mind. Peering through he saw in the loom those same shining knobs and dials, that same huge hourglass apparatus. But there was in it now no forking ray of purple light.
Gone! Gone! In bitterness he realized that although it had been no dream, he had come too late. Too late! And then he felt the girl’s fingers on his arm.
"Look up at the keep," she whispered. "There is a light above us in the keep." His eyes followed her pointing finger in the gloom, and then he saw far above them a tiny embrasure throwing a feeble yellow ray into the night.
Without a word he led her back down into the courtyard, where they finally discovered the door to the keep. Through a clutter of strange machinery they found steps leading upward.
They climbed an interminable length of time, it seemed to him, and yet it was only a minute or so. At every turn in the tortuous stairway they paused, waiting there in the darkness with thumping hearts, expecting momentarily to hear some challenge from above, perhaps the crash of a pistol. On the seventh landing he made out ahead of them a closed door. Leaving her one landing below he crept up to the door and applied his ear to a narrow crack. From within there came no sound, no stir that he could hear. His heart, he thought, thumped too loudly to permit of hearing anything else. By a supreme effort he sought to quiet it. And then, as he listened, not daring to breathe, he caught a faint murmur from behind the door! It was light breathing. The regularity of it told that there were two of them and that both were sleeping.
He pushed his shoulder against the door. It gave easily. There before him, lit by a small swinging lamp overhead, he saw two men. One was an old man stretched out on a pallet of straw in the comer, the other a heavy-built person with pistol at belt, slumped into a chair near the bed on which the old man lay. Even as he watched there in the doorway cold horror struck home to his heart, for he realized that the slight form on the straw bed was his father, and that his father was chained! Thank heaven, then, the old man had not submitted willingly!
But his father chained!
The blood seemed to well up into his eyes. He bounded into the room, all caution gone now. The clatter awoke the sleeper in the chair, and in an instant the man was facing him, his hand going swiftly to the pistol at his belt. In that instant Lindley’s arms locked about the man’s waist, holding his arms there impotently. He dared not trust to his own pistol lest the report bring the whole castle against them.
He did not know that the girl hurried np the stairs behind him nor did he hear her low cry as she ran to the old man on the straw pallet. He did hear his father’s cry of "Lindley! Lindley!" All that mind could encompass now was an insane hatred for this burly beast locked in his arms. He wondered why the man did not cry out and give the alarm. Perhaps they were alone in the castle. Perhaps—but he was not sure enough of it to use his pistol.
In a few seconds he knew that he was likely to have the best of it. The man in his arms seemed curiously inept at this struggle—seemed to be attempting to wrench away rather than reach for his assailant’s throat as Lindley anticipated.
Suddenly he realized that the guard had a definite purpose in the struggle. He seemed to be working the two of them across the room. Lindley found himself trying to speculate on this movement—it was not in the direction of the door and the embrasure was too small to allow the passage of his body. Even if it had been wider there remained outside only a death on the rocks below. Then, through many intervening miles, he heard his father calling to him. What was that?
"Do not let him pull that switch!" The old man’s voice came to him now, full and clear.
What did his father mean? Was there some sort of a signal. At that instant the man in his grip tore one arm free and reached out to the wall. For the first time Lindley saw there a small electric switch, but on that instant the guard’s big hand closed over it and a tiny bluish spark told him it had gone home. With that, Lindley struck, pistol in hand, and the body went limp in his arms.
"Quick! Quick!" the scientist shouted. "That switch releases a mechanism which in eighteen minutes will set off bombs in the moat! They intended blowing themselves up if ever they were caught! There is another switch concealed somewhere below to cut it off, but we could never find it in eighteen minutes!"
Lindley’s feverish fingers found keys on the guard’s body. It seemed hours before they were able to unlock the steel fetters on Fenshaw’s wrists. It seemed a thousand steps to the courtyard below. The scientist glanced at his watch. "Fourteen minutes left," he said. "Time enough to get well out of here and far enough away if we hurry."
They were half-way across the drawbridge when Lindley suddenly paused. The airplane! Was it still down there in the moat? He rushed to the wall, and peering over into the gloom, saw it snugly ensconced there in the black waters, intact and waiting.
Father and son looked at each other in silence. Each knew what the other was thinking. "They’ve been gone now about an hour and a half," said the scientist. "They can not be far. In forty-five minutes we should overtake them, if you can fly a Fokker."
He paused, and Lindley knew what he was thinking. If they went after the speeding car they themselves stood one chance in a thousand of ever coming back alive. That car must be destroyed. It would mean death — of course. Their only hope would be to drive the plane into the face of the speeding motor, wreck it beyond recovery and all those within it. Probably death for the men in the car, but most certain death for those in the plane.
"We must do it!"
The scientist nodded and stepped toward the edge of the bridge. Lindley turned to the girl. "You have time enough to get out of the castle, but you must hurry," he said. "My father and I are going with the plane. We—the baron—it will be the end for him and for us. I’m sorry, I— well, you see we must do it. It is for our country—we have no choice. Come—you must hurry." His voice choked.
He attempted to push her toward the end of die bridge but die pulled away from him. "But I, too, am an American," she said- "My father loved America and my mother died for it. I can not—will not let you go alone. I have come thus far. I will see you through—to whatever comes. Is it not enough that—I—I—" She did not finish.
He wanted to say something, but the words choked him. And then he saw that she swayed toward him.
The scientist, looking back, saw only one figure where there had been two in the gloom near the end of the bridge. The moon, whipped from behind a cloud for the moment, smiled down upon them. Youth—youth! The scientist saw her coming toward him with his son behind her.
"I’m going." It was all she said. Being an old man and understanding, he did not reply.
They found the dock under the draw and tumbled hastily down upon it. Lindley, peering in at the gages, found the tanks partly full.
"Eight minutes more," came the scientist’s voice from the gloom.
Lindley had started over the decks toward the engines when his eyes caught the white bellies of steel cylinders hanging there quietly in the water under the bridge. And then he remembered.
Bombs! Bombs! Enough to blow the castle into the heavens. Three of them taken into the plane and dropped from aloft would be enough to do the trick—enough to destroy that speeding monster. Feverishly he sought among the tools for pliers and wrench.
"Seven minutes!"
A cold chill struck through the younger man’s spine. He knew they would need at least four minutes to get away. God knew how far they would have to be in order to escape the impending cataclysm. "The bombs in the moat!" he shouted. "We need only three of them! Help me!"
They pulled the ship closer to the drawbridge, and Lindley, reaching down into the water, found three of those cylinders of death, clipped their wiring and handed them gingerly up to his father, who crouched in the forward cockpit. The question now was — would they explode if dropped from a sufficient height?
"Three minutes left," said the professor. "We can’t wait any longer." Lindley dragged himself back to the deck, dipped into the pilot's seat and adjusted the controls. The scientist pulled himself out of the cockpit and climbed over to the propellers. At Lindley’s direction he seized one of the blades and twisted it sharply.
Would she start?
The port engine opened up with a deafening roar. The professor scrambled to the other side and repeated the operation on the other propeller. A sputtering report reassured them. But another minute gone! Could they make it? If they got caught now between the bridge and the wall of the moat they would be done for. The plane lashed out drunkenly under the pull of her propellers. Lindley released her and sprang back to his controls. Could he make the passage?
She slid out, scraping only her starboard wing. Ho unleashed her and swung her into the wind, raising her wing control for the long lift upward. There could be but a minute left! He wondered if there could be even that much, expecting with each fleeting second to hear that splitting roar behind him. This waiting for the ship to take the air was worse than death itself. He glanced to the seat at his left and saw the white face of the girl, saw her glance back to the castle. Ahead of him his father was gazing back at the slowly increasing distance between them and the death that lay behind. Would the plane never rise? How the water seemed to ding to her pontoons, how it hated to release her! Ah, she was free now! The lake below seemed to fall away! They were up at last!
He saw his father peering at his watch, fancied that he himself could see the hands set at the hour of death. The professor raised his hand...
Lindley felt the murderous red glare of it on his back before the splitting crash smote across his eardrums. The plane rocked drunkenly, dipped her nose and plunged downward. They were not far enough up, they could not afford a nose dive now! The water below — it was still too near! Two years over the lines in Flanders had served him well. Automatically he pulled at the controls. She rocked; the struts sang out even above the roar of the propellers. Would something give way now? One little snap—and oblivion!
There was a second roaring crash behind them, this time not so loud. The red glare lit up the heavens. Would some of this hurtling debris reach the ship, strike her down? Something sang past his head. A bit of mortar in one of those engines— a smashed propeller -
Bits of brick, stone and mortar flung past them, thumped against the ship’s body, pattered on her wings— and dropped into the void beneath them. Back of them the red glare was subsiding to a sulky, sanguine glow. It was the end of Blennerhof.
Lindley veered to the right and they picked up the lake road. They followed it, a narrow ribbon of gray picked out by the moonlight. The lake was left behind. If anything went wrong now they were too low to volpane to the surface of the water. It would be the end, a crash against tree or rock.
The scudding clouds which had almost continuously effaced the moon were fewer new and Lindley had little difficulty in following the road. He soared as high as possible, watching his father, who peered from the forward cockpit into the night. Once the port engine began to skip, but it settled back once more. That steady, reassuring drone was comforting. Lindley saw the still white face beside him, wondered if she realized how close they were to their journey’s end.
Twenty minutes; a half-hour; forty minutes passed. The scientist had risen now and was peering ahead into the moonlit countryside. Had they missed the car—had there been some side road into which it had turned? Had it drawn up for the moment beside the wayside while the ship roared on overhead, oblivious of its quarry?
Fifty minutes. Lindley saw his father raise his hand, saw him point, far away into the night. Leaning forward he followed with his eye the pointing finger. There was nothing —no, no, there it was ten miles ahead, a huge, silver-skinned beetle on a ribbon of ashen gray! Even at that distance he caught the gleam of the moon shining on that peculiar glass dome in her steel cupola.
He saw his father reach down at his feet and laboriously hoist one of the heavy cylinders to the lip of the cockpit. Fumbling nervously with the controls he dipped the ship downward as far as he dared. It was necessary to be close. It would not be an easy shot. The bombs were clumsy cylinders, unwinged, and not intended for such work. He wondered if the force of contact would be sufficient to explode them. And the crash — if there was one—they must not be too low lest they be themselves blown into the skies!
Five miles now! Three! Two! Had they been noticed? They had one advantage—that of surprize. They would not be expected. Perhaps they could creep up near enough before their purpose was established. But now the car had evidently shot forward with increased speed. One mile flicked out behind them. Apparently they had been seen.
They were now over the speeding car! The time had come!
Lindley saw his father looking back for the signal. He raised his hand. The plane jerked upward, slightly.
No sound save the roar of their own engines! Had the thing refused to explode? But no—there was a muffled crash from below. It had exploded! But had it found its mark? He glanced over the side.
There beneath them was the speeding car — unscathed! They had missed it! He saw his father poise the second bomb on the edge of the cockpit and look back for the signal. Glancing down he saw they were still over the car. It was the moment. He raised his hand, saw the black speck hurtling earthward.
No sound this time. It had failed to explode! Lindley groaned inwardly. There was but one left. Failing this there remained only that last resort-driving the ship into the face of the speeding motor. Death for all in the car, probably. Death for ail in the plane, certainly!
But what was that? A flash of purple! He saw his father recoil in the cockpit, felt his own fingers freeze on the controls!
It was the purple ray, searching for them there in the sky!
He shot the plane upward and banked sharply. One whisk of that sinister ray across the ship, one touch on the body of any of them and they would be gone! That swift turn of his had saved them for the moment. There had been just a flash of purple across her wings. He thought of his engines, knew from what he had read, that they might be stalled by the ray.
They in the car, having missed once, would try again. Turning backward he saw that purple finger in the sky behind them—searching— searching. They had evaded it for the moment but it would find them sooner or later....
Well, if it was to be the end, he would make a desperate finish of it! He saw his father motion him to bear the ship downward. To get the proper angle he swooped her first upward and then looped again, barely missing that sinister line of purple! Into the face of it then! Again he banked her sharply, saw that narrow ribbon of purple sweep across the wings, closer to the fuselage this time! Three feet nearer and it would have passed over his body!
He found himself wondering if they were merely playing with them there in the air, and ground his teeth savagely. Toward them swung that purple bar once more, and again he banked the plane until the struts sang out their warning. This time that ribbon of purple had barely missed the girl. In a short pause of the engines he heard her cry out, saw her looking backward. Turning his own eyes he saw the purple of it shining through the thin body of the ship as if it had been tissue paper!
Another swoop, a sharp bank and they were over the car once more. He raised his hand to his father, saw the old man poise their last missile on the edge of the cockpit. Into the very teeth of death now! The purple was just ahead of them, barring the way. Gritting his teeth he sped the ship directly in the path of it, slanting her downward! He would finish it that way if the last bomb failed!
The purple seemed to sear his eyes. He fought down an overpowering impulse to close them. God, he was tired! Let it come now. He found himself wondering if it would be swift. He saw the thin figure of his father in the cockpit before him, limned for a second against the glaring purple, saw him hesitate but a moment, saw the heavy cylinder hurtle over the side. That purple lane came nearer, seemed to engulf them. He closed his eyes—let it come!
A reverberating roar from below! Their last bomb had not failed them! He opened his eyes. The purple was gone! Glancing down with the roar of the bomb he saw the great gray beetle lift itself off the road, saw it shatter in a thousand pieces against the rocks that lined the hillside!
He found himself muttering, "The end—the end." He shot the ship upward into the heavens and circled there in the moonlight. Bit by bit they made it out below them—torn and twisted machinery; tons and tons, it seemed, of shattered glass; a hundred intricate wheels—two limp figures which lay together by the roadside but did not move—would move no more. The secret of the ray gone with its inventor!
The plane climbed in slow spirals. Her gas would be well expended, Lindley thought, and they must find a lake somewhere. The moon was fast fading. A few minutes more and the blackness which presaged the dawn would be under and around them, shutting out the world. He turned to the girl beside him and saw her pointing northward toward a slim patch of silver. Water and a place to land! Mechanically, he turned the ship’s nose toward it, fighting a great weariness from mind and body.
They dipped down out of the heavens just as the dawn was breaking.
CHAPTER 8
THE PROFESSOR’S STORY
They left the girl at a peasant’s hut on the shore of the lake and hurried back over the fields. There must be no mistake. This terrible machine must be destroyed forever. When they arrived at the spot in the roadside they found what they had hoped for. Leipische was there, dead with his secret. Near him lay the body of Baron Blennerhof.
The professor found Leipische’s hat and placed it over the dead man’s eyes. "Poor Leipische," he said quietly. "If you had turned your genius to construction instead of destruction it would not have been thus. But how did you find me?" he asked, turning to Lindley eagerly.
"It was chance, or fate, or God," said Lindley. "When they gave up hope of ever finding you I went out alone. As I remember it, I went to Chicago and took the name of Ferris in order to conceal my identity. I remembered some of your experimenting during the first part of the war and it occurred to me this was no ordinary crime. In Chicago I had a little bad luck—or maybe it was good luck. I was going under the name of Ferris, hoping thereby to get some clue, when one night in a hotel there a pickpocket got my wallet. I chased the wretch through an open door and he swung it back down on me and I got a cracked skull. He had my wallet with my real papers so when I awoke in the hospital with memory gone they’d put me down as Ferris—found a cardcase in my pocket with some cards I’d had printed. I hate to be thinking what I’ve fallen into between then and now —a regular Jekyll and Hyde existence, I guess. In the hospital they told me I’d get my memory back some day but that it would require some sort of a shock. I was deathly afraid of mirrors, couldn’t bear the sight of one. They said it was a pathological fear brought on by the crash. Two or three times I must have been on the verge of coming back—or at any rate I felt that way —but always something intervened. Once I wanted to commit murder— that was Von Schaang when I saw the girl fighting him on the road by the castle. I guess I was pretty near getting back then but the shock of it wasn’t enough. It required something else and I got it with those mirrors at the villa."
He related the events in detail.
"But you," he continued. "You must have been through hell.".
"I think I have," said the scientist, slowly. "It’s worse when you find you’ve made a mistake like that, even when you’ve been tricked into it. It was Leipische — poor devil. I bear him no ill will now, though I could have killed him before, had he given me the chance. I suppose he’s always been a little insane. Most geniuses are. I knew him first when we studied together at Bonn during our younger days. He was brilliant, far beyond any of the rest of us, but undoubtedly a little mad. He was deeply interested in electro-therapeutics, but he did not lose faith in the curing of ills by electricity as most of us came to do in latter days. I believe he carried on his long and exhaustive researches along these lines up until the time of the war.
"When he hit upon the idea of the purple ray, I do not know, but presumably it was during the war. But they never had time to develop it. They lacked one thing and that, as ill luck would have it, was the thing I had. As you know, at the university I had been experimenting with an apparatus that would permit the everyday use of X-rays of tremendous power. This has ever been our problem. We knew we could develop an I-ray of tremendous potentiality but we had trouble in controlling it. It proved as dangerous to the operator and patient as it was efficacious in the cure of cancerous growths. Eventually I hit upon and developed an apparatus which seemed to offer the adequate protection. We were keeping the thing a secret for the time being.
"Well, what I had found was just what Leipische needed. He had produced his own devil-ray but the thing had killed several of his colleagues and nearly was his own undoing. It seemed to be as dangerous to the operator as to the enemy. Its effect on all forms of life, both animal and vegetable, is instantaneous. In the animal it inflicts a terrific shock, utterly destroying the nervous system and rupturing, probably, every blood vessel in the brain. The effect is somewhat similar to death by electric shock except there is no mark left on the body. An autopsy would be necessary to reveal what had really happened. The ray has a singular effect, too, on certain mechanical devices. For instance I have seen Leipische stop a motor with it at the distance of several feet, back there in Blennerhof. He said it choked the thing by developing an excess of carbon dioxide or nitrogen in the cylinders. Luckily they didn’t have time to get at our airplane engines. They undoubtedly could have put us out of business while we were still on the horizon had they suspected in any way who we were.
"But to go on. Leipisehe got wind of my invention and he determined that what I had discovered in the way of protection he must have. They lay near me one night when I was working at the laboratory alone, and made me open the safe where I kept my blueprints and formulas. To cover the thing up thoroughly, they left some old prints and papers about — things that were quite useless. Naturally they had either to kidnap or kill me and they chose the former, thinking perhaps they might need me later.
"When they brought me here it was some time before I knew what they were working on, but when I did I went nearly mad. I could see what was bound to happen, and I felt that I had, by my carelessness, been contributory to it. I tried to disarm their suspicions of me by pretending an interest but they were too bright for me. They let me have the run of the castle, but always Leipisehe or one of the guards was at my heels. Once I tried to blow them up—pulled one of those switches, but they were ready for that and merely cut it off somewhere from below. You see, they were in mortal fear of discovery so they had taken precautions to blow everything up if ever they were discovered.
"And then that night when I saw your face at the window. That gave me hope because I supposed you had gotten track of me and were merely awaiting an opportunity to strike. I knew that they were getting ready for a coup d’etat, and when I did not see any more of you for days I was in despair. And then the final night and you came. And now this"—he indicated with a wave of his hand the shattered debris of the wrecked car.
They sat for a long time looking at the ruin before them. Finally Lindley got up. "We’d better be getting back to the cottage," he said. "She’ll be waiting for us."
They went back together toward the lake.
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