Читать книгу Doctor Zero and Others - Paul Chadwick - Страница 5

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WADE hadn't been on the scene when Munn was killed. But he heard a ripping, crackling burst of sound now. Then a terrible detonation blasted the air like an exploding bomb. He saw the top of the police car disintegrate in a pall of smoke and flame and zigzag streamers of light.

The swiftly-moving car swerved from the road and headed up the embankment. He got a blurred glimpse of churning wheels, flying grass and thrashing bushes. Then the car swerved again in its erratic course. It turned turtle and came rolling back down the bank, where it lay, a smoking, twisted ruin beside the ditch.

The darkness of the night closed in, and Wade, feeling momentarily sick and weak for all the violent deaths he had seen in his life, brought his own roadster to a halt. He got out and walked forward unsteadily.

A man was lying dead in the roadway. It was one of the detectives, blown clear of the car when the fireball had exploded, shattering the vehicle's top. Another man, whom Wade identified with a shudder, as Parks, was half-pinned under the battered wreckage. He, too, had been killed instantly.

Wade wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. The thing he had just seen was enough to shake any man's nerves. He remembered Zadok Smith then. Smith's frantic, terrified screams seemed still to ring in his ears. The young man had sensed his danger in time to jump from the car. His fear of the Purple Peril had driven him to risk the detectives' bullets.

Any evidence that the police car had contained had been destroyed.

Wade went back to his roadster and pulled a flashlight from under the front seat. He walked along the road to the spot where he'd seen Smith dive from the moving car. The dirt here was kicked up, showing the marks of Smith's knees. Up the embankment the branches of a number of bushes were broken, marking the trail of Smith's mad flight to escape death.

Then Wade caught his breath. His probing flashlight had revealed a gleam of metal in the shrubbery. He focused the beam and stooped down.

A small fraternity pin with some sort of cabalistic markings on it was lying at his feet. It had apparently been brushed from Zadok Smith's clothing. Wade picked it up and slipped it into his pocket.

There seemed to be little use in trying to follow Smith now. He should be a half-mile away by this time. Terror had lent speed to his feet and the darkness would act as an all-concealing curtain.

Wade had been the sole witness of this grisly double murder. He lifted the body of the slain detective from the road and laid it beside the ruins of the police car.

Then he got into his roadster. He wanted to reach the nearest telephone quickly and let Inspector Thompson know that the sinister hand of Doctor Zero had brought death again.

He came to a filling station a mile down the road and stopped. There was a telephone in it. Wade's own voice was hoarse as he talked to the inspector over the wire.

Images of the killing he had witnessed and echoes of Zadok Smith's terrified screams still seemed to pulsate through his brain.

He felt as though the whole thing were a mad nightmare--but he knew it wasn't. In brief sentences he gave the details of the double murder to Thompson. He wound up with his own conclusions.

"We're dealing with a murderer who kills as unemotionally as a machine. He had nothing against Parks and Carmichael personally. He killed them because they carried evidence which might be dangerous."

Thompson's voice came back with a tremor in it.

"I can't have my men knocked off like this. We've got to find Doctor Zero."

WADE knew that the inspector wasn't taking the deaths of his two assistants lightly. The old crime-hunter concealed human emotion under a bluff, hardboiled exterior. Parks and Carmichael had been with him for years.

"We'll find him," said Wade grimly. "There's a question mark after his name now--but it'll be a death sentence before we're through."

"What'll you do next, Hammond--try to trace Smith?"

"Yes. Then I want to have a talk with Professor Ornstein. Have you any more dope on him, chief?"

"He stayed at the Belmont all evening with Miss Munn, as he told us. He left her only once to make a short telephone call. The house detective helped us check up on him. His alibi is watertight."

"You and I've seen alibis break down before," Wade said. "Smith has an alibi, too, now. He was in the police car when the fireball came, But he hasn't explained yet what he was doing prowling around Munn's house at the exact time of the murder."

"No--and here's another angle I've just thought of," said Thompson with a snap in his voice. "It didn't take more than three minutes for those balls that killed Munn to drop out of the air and explode. Ornstein's call was made somewhere around the same time. We don't know what sort of thing we're dealing with."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that if there's science mixed up in this, as we think, we've got a tough job on our hands."

"Tough is right, chief." There was a humorless smile on Wade's face as he spoke.

It was after eleven when Wade drove to the campus of the Technological Institute and asked to be directed to Professor Ornstein's quarters. A night watchman stared at him, then pointed across the campus grounds to where lights were burning in the third story of a modernistic looking building.

"He's up there," the watchman said. "That's where he works. I saw his car go by ten minutes ago."

Wade examined the building that housed Ornstein's laboratory. It surprised him to find the man at work so late at night. Ornstein, he figured, must have left Arlene at her aunt's, then come back here. And he must be a man with stout nerves to go calmly back to work after being at the scene of Munn's murder such a short time before.

A fire escape snaked down the side of the building, passing Professor Ornstein's windows. Wade noticed this and also saw the light in the front vestibule was burning. An automatic elevator connected with the various floors.

Wade took the elevator to Ornstein's floor and knocked. Ornstein himself came to the door. He had slipped a white coat over his evening clothes and looked trim and efficient. For a moment he stared at Wade blankly. Then he smiled in recognition.

"Hammond," he said. "I remember now. Come in."

"Sorry to interrupt your work, professor."

"Don't mind that. I'm always puttering around. I've got so I can't sleep if I don't amuse myself for a while before going to bed."

Wade studied the man for a second, then spoke.

"There was another murder after you left--a double one. Two detectives were killed. I want to ask you about a man named Zadok Smith. Ever hear of him?"

Ornstein whistled. Then an odd look came into his eyes. His sharp features had the satanic quality that Wade had noticed before.

"I know young Smith too well," Ornstein said. "He's a student here--one of Professor Hartz's, specializing in mineralogy and analytical chemistry. Frankly I don't like him. He's an impertinent young devil. He has a habit of coming in here uninvited and making a nuisance of himself. I think he imagines he's spying on my work. He's annoyed Arlene, too."

"So Miss Munn knows him then?"

"Yes, slightly. She's good-hearted enough to tolerate his mooning around."

Wade nodded.

"Smith was found prowling outside the Munn house just after the murder. He had a queer instrument in his pocket--a compass and a galvanometer hitched together apparently. Two men started back to headquarters with him. Then another of those fireballs dropped out of the sky. Smith jumped and escaped and the two detectives were killed. Have you any theory, professor, as to what Smith might have been doing?"

A veil of suspicion seemed to drop over Ornstein's face for a moment. He laughed uneasily.

"You're connected with the police, Hammond," he said. "I wouldn't want to commit myself. I'd advise you, though, to find out all you can about Smith. Talk to Professor Hartz tomorrow. Smith's actions have certainly been queer."

"What about those fireballs?" said Wade. "I've got a theory that they may be electrical. You're a physicist. You ought to know."

"You mean you think they're controlled charges of static, like lightning?"

"Something of the sort."

"Look here!" Ornstein walked across the room quickly and opened a door. Through it Wade saw the complex paraphernalia of a modern scientific laboratory. There were shelves of chemicals, various electrical apparatus, including static machines of the Whymshurst type, Geissler tubes, and delicate instruments to demonstrate the composition of matter.

ORNSTEIN threw a small knife switch which sent current into the terminals of a ten-inch spark coil. The pungent, pleasant smell of ozone filled the air as miniature lightning flared between the gaps. A battery of foil-covered condensers were being charged. Close to them was an apparatus with adjustable electrodes. At the moment they were spaced four feet apart. The bottom one consisted of a copper plate two inches square.

"Watch," said Ornstein. "Here's lightning for you."

He reached into a box on a shelf and drew out a common walnut. He placed the nut on the copper electrode and stepped back.

"Call that nut a house," he said. "The electrode above is the sky. Now we have a thunderstorm. The electrode becomes a cloud."

He was speaking in his best classroom manner. Suddenly he turned off the overhead lights, then pressed another switch attached to a flexible cord.

There came a sharp, crackling report as a streak of violet light shot down from the top electrode. It struck the plate below in the millionth part of a second, passing through the walnut and sending shattered pieces of shell flying in all directions.

"In the General Electric Laboratories at Schenectady," said Ornstein, "they've made lightning that can shatter a block of hardwood. I use this little machine to give practical demonstrations to my students."

"There's more than one kind of lightning," said Wade. "This sort is known as chain, I believe. Could ball lightning be made in a laboratory, too, professor?"

Ornstein shot Wade a quick look, then smiled.

"Ball lightning is a rare phenomenon, Hammond. Its existence has been proven, but unusual atmospheric conditions cause it and it has never been reproduced artificially. Nothing is impossible, though, in the light of modern science. Lightning is the result of an electrical disturbance in the atoms of the air. The atoms in turn are made up of electrons. If a man found a way of controlling the electrons themselves he might do wonders. Professor Osterhout of Harvard estimates that there is enough potential electronic energy in a teaspoonful of water to drive a train across the continent."

Wade nodded, staring around him. There seemed to be other rooms connected with the main laboratory, but Ornstein didn't offer to show them. Wade sensed that the man was an adept at disguising his real thoughts. He was something of an enigma, always disarmingly pleasant.

Wade thanked the professor for his information and was preparing to go when the telephone in the outer room jangled. Ornstein picked the instrument up, then his face suddenly stiffened.

"My God--no!"

It was the first time Wade had seen any sign of emotion on Ornstein's part. The professor held the receiver to his ear for nearly a minute, then whirled around. He spoke tensely.

"Arlene--Miss Munn--has been kidnapped. I left her at her aunt's. She was going to spend the night there. A maid went to her room a few minutes ago and found her gone. The window was open and a ladder was leaning against it from the outside."