The Science Fiction of Erle Stanley Gardner - The Human Zero Read online

“Help, help, help! This is Paul Dangerfield. Help me! Help me!”

  Captain Harder threw his weight against the door. As well have thrown his weight against the solid masonry of a wall.

  “Hello,” he called. “Are you safe, Dangerfield? This is the police!”

  The men could hear the sound of frantic blows on the opposite side of the door.

  “Thank God! Quick, get me out of here. Smash in the door. It’s a foot thick. Get something to batter it down with!”

  The words were faint, muffled. The blows which sounded upon the other side of the door gave evidence of the thickness and strength of the portal.

  Captain Harder turned to one of the men.

  “How about keys?”

  “I’ve got ’em, Captain, but where do we put ’em?”

  The officer stepped back to look at the door.

  There was not a sign of a lock or keyhole in it. There was a massive knob, but nothing else to show that the door differed from the side of the wall, save the hairline which marked its borders.

  “Smash it in! All together!”

  They flung themselves against the door.

  Their efforts were utterly unavailing.

  “Hurry, hurry!” yelled the voice on the other side of the door. “He’s going to . . . No, no! Don’t. Oh! Go away! Don’t touch that door. Oh . . . Oh . . . Not that!”

  The voice rose to a piercing wail of terror, and then was silent. The squad pounded on the door, received no answer.

  Captain Harder whirled to examine the loft.

  “There’s a bar over there. Let’s get this door down.”

  He raised the whistle to his lips, blew a shrill blast. The two men who had been guarding the stairs came up on the run.

  “Get this door down!” snapped the police captain. “And let’s make it snappy.”

  They held a block of wood so that it formed a fulcrum for the bar, inserted the curved end, started to pry. The door was as solid as though it had been an integral part of the wall. Slowly, however, the men managed to get the bar inserted to a point where the leverage started to spring the bolts.

  Yet it was a matter of minutes, during which time there was no sound whatever from that mysterious inner room.

  At length the door swayed, creaked, pried unevenly, sprung closed as the men shifted their grips on the bar to get a fresh purchase.

  “Now, then, boys!” said Captain Harder, perspiration streaming down from his forehead and into his eyes. “Let’s go!”

  They flung themselves into the work. The door tottered, creaked, slowly pried loose, and then banged open.

  The squad stared at a room built without windows. There was ventilation which came through a grating in the roof. This grating was barred with inch-thick iron bars. The air sucked out through one section, came blowing through another. The air seemed fresh enough, yet there was an odor in that room which was a stale stench of death. It was the peculiar, sickeningly sweet odor which hangs about a house which has been touched by death.

  There was a table, a reclining chair, a carpet, a tray of food, a bed. The room gave evidence of having been lived in.

  But it was vacant, so far as any living thing was concerned.

  On the floor, near the door which had been forced, was a pile of clothing. The clothing was sprawled out as though it had covered the form of a man who had toppled backward to the door, stretched his full length upon the floor, and then been withdrawn from his garments.

  Captain Harder bent to an examination of the garments. There was a watch in the pocket which had stopped. The stopping of the watch was exactly five minutes before, at about the time the officers had begun pounding at the door.

  There was a suit of silk underwear inside of the outer garments. The tie was neatly knotted about the empty collar. The sleeves of the shirt were down inside the sleeves of the coat. There were socks which nested down inside the shoes, as though thrust there by some invisible foot.

  There was no word spoken.

  Those officers, reporters, detectives, hardened by years of experience to behold the gruesome, stared speechlessly at that vacant bundle of clothing.

  Charles Ealy was the one who broke the silence.

  “Good heavens! There’s been a man in these clothes and he’s been sucked out, like a bit of dirt being sucked up into a vacuum cleaner!”

  Captain Harder regained control of himself with an effort. His skin was still damp with perspiration, but that perspiration had cooled until it presented an oily slime which accentuated the glistening pallor of his skin.

  “It’s a trap, boys. It’s a damned clever trap, but it’s just a trap. There couldn’t have been . . .”

  He didn’t finish, for Ruby Orman, speaking in a hushed voice, pointed to one of the shoes.

  “Try,” she said, “just try fitting a sock into the toe of that shoe the way this one is fitted, and try doing it while the shoe’s laced, or do it and then lace the shoe afterward, and see where you get.”

  “Humph,” said Ealy, “as far as that’s concerned, try getting a necktie around the collar of a shirt and then fitting a coat and vest around the shirt.”

  Captain Harder cleared his throat and addressed them all.

  “Now listen, you guys, you’re actin’ like a bunch of kids. Even supposing there was some one in this room, where could he have gone? There ain’t any opening. He couldn’t have slid through those bars in the ventilator.”

  Some of the detectives nodded sagely, but it remained for Rodney to ask the question which left them baffled.

  “How,” he asked, “was it possible to get the foot out of that laced shoe?”

  Captain Harder turned away.

  “Let’s not get stampeded,” he said.

  He started to look around him.

  “Cooked food’s been brought in here at regular intervals . . . the man that was here was Dangerfield, all right. Those are his clothes. There’s the mark of the tailor, and there’s his gold-scrolled fountain pen. His watch has his initials on, even his check book is in the pocket.

  “I tell you, boys, we’re on the right track. This is the place Dangerfield’s been kept, and it’s that inventor who’s at the bottom of the whole thing. We’ll go knock his place over, and we’ll probably find where Dangerfield is right now. He was spirited away from here, somehow.

  “Those clothes were left here for a blind. Don’t get stampeded. Here, feel the inside of the cloth. It’s plumb cold, awfully cold. If anybody’d been inside those clothes within five minutes, the clothes’d be warm.”

  One of the officers nodded. His face gave an exhibition of sudden relief which was almost ludicrous. He grinned shamefacedly.

  “By George, Captain, that’s so! Do you know, for a minute, this thing had me goofy. But you can see how cool the clothes are, and this watch is like a chunk of ice. It’d be warm if anybody had been inside those clothes.”

  “Who,” asked Sid Rodney, “was it that was calling to us through the door?”

  Captain Harder stepped to the door, dragged in the bar.

  “I don’t know. It may have been a trick of ventriloquism, or it may have been a sound that was projected through the ventilating system. But, anyhow, I’m going to find out. If there’s a secret entrance to this room, I’m going to find it if I have to rip off every board of the walls one at a time.”

  He started with the bar, biting it into the tongue and groove which walled the sides of the room. Almost instantly the ripping bar disclosed the unique construction of that room.

  It consisted of tongue and groove, back of which was a layer of thick insulation that looked like asbestos. Back of that was a layer of thick steel, and the steel seemed to be backed with concrete, so solid was it.

  By examining the outside of the room, they were able to judge the depth of the walls. They seemed to be at least three feet thick. The room was a veritable sound-proof chamber.

  Evidently the door was operated by some electro-magnetic control. There were thick bars
which went from the interior of the door down into sockets built in the floor, steel faced, bedded in concrete.

  Captain Harder whistled.

  “Looks like there was no secret exit there. It must have been some sort of ventriloquism.”

  Sid Rodney grunted.

  “Well, it wasn’t ventriloquism that made the jars on that door. It was some one pounding and kicking on the other side. And, if you’ll notice the toes of those shoes, you’ll see where there are fragments of wood splinters, little flakes of paint, adhering to the soles right where they point out into the uppers.

  “Now, then, if you’ll take the trouble to look at the door, you’ll find little marks in the wood which correspond to the marks on the toes of the shoes. In other words, whether those shoes were occupied or not, they were hammering against that door a few minutes ago.”

  Captain Harder shook his head impatiently.

  “The trouble with all that reasoning is that it leads into impossibilities.”

  Sid Rodney stooped to the vest pocket, looked once more at the gold embossed fountain pen.

  “Has any one tried this to see if it writes?” he asked.

  “What difference would that make?” asked the police captain.

  “He might have left us a message,” said Sid.

  He abstracted the pen, removed the cap, tried the end of the pen upon his thumb nail. Then he took a sheet of paper from his notebook, tried the pen again.

  Captain Harder grunted.

  “Listen, you guys, all this stuff isn’t getting us anywhere. The facts are that Dangerfield was here. He ain’t here now.

  Albert Crome has this place rented. He has a grudge against Dangerfield. It’s an odds-on bet that we’re going to get the whole fiendish scheme out of him—if we get there soon enough.”

  There was a mutter of affirmation from the officers, even men who were more accustomed to rely upon direct action and swift accusation than upon the slower method of deduction.

  “Wait a minute,” said Sid Rodney. His eyes were flaming with the fire of an inner excitement. He unscrewed the portion of the pen which contained the tip, from the barrel, drew out the long rubber tube which held the ink.

  Captain Harder regarded him with interest, but with impatience.

  “Just like any ordinary self-filling pen the world over,” said the police captain.

  Sid Rodney made no comment. He took a knife from his pocket, slit open the rubber sac. A few sluggish drops of black liquid trickled slowly down his thumb, then he pulled out a jet-black rod of solid material.

  He was breathing rapidly now, and the men, attracted by the fierce earnestness of his manner, crowded about him.

  “What is it?” asked one.

  Rodney did not answer the question directly. He broke the thing in half, peered at the ends.

  These ends glistened like some polished, black jewel which had been broken open. The light reflected from little tiny points, giving an odd appearance of sheen and luster.

  Slowly a black stain spread along the palm of the detective’s hand.

  Sid Rodney set the long rod of black, broken into two pieces, down upon the tray of food.

  “Is that ink?” demanded Harder.

  “Yes.”

  “What makes it look so funny?”

  “It’s frozen.”

  “Frozen!”

  “Yes.”

  “But how could ink be frozen in a room of this sort? The room isn’t cold.

  Sid Rodney shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’m not advancing any theories—yet. I’m simply remarking that it’s frozen ink. You’ll notice that the rubber covering and the air which was in the barrel of the pen acted as something of a thermal insulation. Therefore, it was slower to thaw out than some things.”

  Captain Harder stared at Rodney with a puckered forehead and puzzled eyes.

  “What things do you mean?”

  “The watch, for instance. You notice that it’s started to run again.”

  “By George, it has!” said Charles Ealy. “It’s started ticking right along just as though nothing had happened, but it’s about six and a half or seven minutes slow.”

  Sid nodded silent affirmation.

  Captain Harder snorted.

  “You birds can run all the clues that you want to. I’m going to get a confession out of the bird that’s responsible for this.

  “Two of you stay here and see that no one comes in or goes out. Guard this place. Shoot to kill any one who disobeys your orders. This thing is serious, and there’s murder at the bottom of it, or I miss my guess.”

  He whirled and stamped from the room, walking with that aggressive swing of the shoulders, that forward thrust of his sturdy legs which betokened no good for the crack-brained scientist.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Madmans Laboratory

  They hammered on the door.

  After a matter of minutes there was an answer, a thin, cracked voice which echoed through the thick partitions of a door which seemed every bit as substantial as the door which Captain Harder had forced in order to enter that curious room where an empty suit of clothes had mocked him.

  “Who it is?”

  Captain Harder tried a subterfuge.

  “Captain Harder, come to see about the purchase of an invention. I’m representing the War Department.”

  The man on the other side of that door crackled into a cackling chuckle. “It’s about time. Let’s have a look at you.”

  Captain Harder nodded to the squad of grim-visaged men who were grouped just back of him.

  “All ready, boys,” he said.

  They lowered their shoulders, ready to rush the door as soon as it should be opened.

  But, to their surprise, there was a slight scraping noise, and a man’s face peered malevolently at them from a rectangular slit in the door.

  Captain Harder jerked back.

  The face was only partially visible through the narrow peephole. But there was a section of wrinkled forehead, shaggy, unkempt eyebrows, the bridge of a bony nose, and two eyes.

  The eyes compelled interest.

  They were red rimmed. They seemed to be perpetually irritated, until the irritation had seeped into the brain itself. And they glittered with a feverish light of unwholesome cunning.

  “Psh! The police!” said the voice, sounding startlingly clear through the opening of the door.

  “Open in the name of the law!” snapped Captain Harder.

  “Psh!” said the man again.

  There was the faintest flicker of motion from behind the little peephole in the door, and a sudden coughing explosion. A little cloud of white smoke mushroomed slowly out from the corner of the opening.

  The panel slid into place with the smooth efficiency of a well oiled piece of machinery.

  Captain Harder jerked out his service revolver.

  “All together, boys. Take that door down!”

  He gathered himself, then coughed, flung up his hand to his eyes.

  “Gas!” he yelled. “Look out!”

  The warning came too late for most of the squad of officers who were grouped about that door. The tear gas, a new and deadly kind which seemed so volatile as to make it mix instantly with the atmosphere, spread through the corridor. Men were blinded, staggering about, groping their way, crashing into one another.

  The panel in the door slid back again. The leering, malevolent features twisted into a hoarse laugh.

  Captain Harder flung up his revolver and fired at the sound of that demoniac laughter.

  The bullet thudded into the door.

  The panel slid shut.

  Sid Rodney had flung his arm about the waist of Ruby Orman at the first faint suggestion of mushrooming fumes.

  “Back! It may be deadly!”

  She fought against him.

  “Let me go! I’ve got to cover this!”

  But he swept her from her feet, flung her to his shoulder, sprinted down the hallways of the house. A servant
gazed at them from a lower floor, scowling. Men were running, shouting questions at each other, stamping up and down stairs. The entire atmosphere of the house took on a peculiarly acrid odor.

  * * *

  Sid Rodney got the girl to an upper window on the windward side of the house. Fresh air was blowing in in a cooling stream.

  “Did it get your eyes?”

  “No. I’m going back.”

  Sid held her.

  “Don’t be foolish. There’s going to be something doing around here, and you and I have got to have our eyes where they can see something.”

  She fought against him.

  “Oh, I hate you! You’re so domineering, so cocksure of yourself.”

  Abruptly, he let her go.

  “If you feel that way,” he said, “go ahead.”

  She jerked back and away. She looked at him with eyes that were flaming with emotion. Sid Rodney turned back toward the window. Her eyes softened in expression, but there was a flaming spot in each cheek.

  “Why will you persist in treating me like a child?”

  He made no effort to answer the question.

  She turned back toward the end of the hallway, where the scientist had maintained his secret laboratory with the door that held the sliding panel.

  Men were struggling blindly about that door. Others were wrapping their eyes in wet towels. Here and there a figure groped its way about the corridor, clutching at the sides of the banister at the head of the stairs, feeling the edges of the walls.

  Suddenly, the entire vision swam before her eyes, grew blurred. She felt something warm trickling down her cheek. Abruptly her vision left her. Her eyes streamed moisture.

  “Sid!” she called. “Oh, Sid!”

  He was at her side in an instant. She felt the strong tendons of his arm, the supporting bulk of his shoulder, and then she was swung toward the window where the fresh air streamed into the house.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Now it’s got me.”

  “It probably won’t bother you very long. You didn’t get much of a dose of it. Hold your eyes open if you can, and face the breeze. They’ll have the house cleared of the fumes in a few minutes.”