3.

The disappearance on shipboard of the great inventor, Jules Marxman, stirred police circles as a stick stirs muddy water. The vanishing of Linton Yates was distinctly secondary: Yates, though far richer, was not as internationally known.

At the hotel suite booked by Marxman for himself and his a.s.sistant, swarms of detectives and newspaper reporters filed in and out interviewing, or trying to interview, Slycher, the a.s.sistant.

But there was one man who had no trouble closeting himself with Slycher, known to police and news hawks if not the public, he was treated with amazing deference. That was Ascott Keane. He sat in the tower suite now with Slycher.

"You say you thought a.s.sistant Secretary of War Harley talked to Marxman just before Marxman disappeared?" Keane repeated.

Slycher nodded, white-faced, more than a little frightened. He was himself a murder suspect, of course.

"But Harley denies seeing Marxman?" Keane went on.

"Yes," said Slycher. "Most of the police think I'm making up the story. But I swear I saw Mr. Harley go into Mr. Marxman's cabin. Also, I saw him come out again, and shortly afterward, Mr. Marxman went on deck - and was never seen again."

Keane looked at the man. He was obviously telling the truth, as he saw it.

"Harley is above suspicion," Keane mused. "If he denies he was with Marxman, it quite likely he wasn't there, in spite of appearances. That means someone must have impersonated Harley. Marxman was bringing home a nearly completed war formula, wasn't he?"

Slycher nodded and told him about the poison gas, which was perfected, and the antidote which was not.

"The gas was useless as a weapon till the antidote could be worked out better," he concluded. So, anyone stealing the gas formula couldn't use it anyhow: if he tried, he'd be knocked out himself."

Keane's eyes were intent, and were glinting a little as they always did when he was uncovering a warm scent.

"This formula of the antidote," he said slowly. "As it stood, it figuratively killed anyone who took it ---"

"Not figuratively actually!" the inventor's a.s.sistant interrupted. "Anyone taking it dies, as far as medical examination can show, for twelve hours."

"And Doctor Satan can Communicate with the dead!" Keane breathed.

"What?"

"Nothing, I think I'm beginning to see light, that's all. And now for a very important question. And you'll have to judge for yourself, from recommendations given you concerning me, whether you dare answer truly. Did Marxman, by any chance, have a sample of the antidote among his effects?"

Slycher hesitated a long time before he answered that. Then slowly he nodded.

"He did. He dared to do it because the formula was so complicated that he doubted if any laboratory could fully a.n.a.lyze the sample and duplicate it."

"Let me have it, will you?" said Keane.

Again the a.s.sistant studied his face for a long time. But Keane's sincerity and authority were unquestionable. Slycher got up and went to the next room of the suite. He came back with a heavily sealed envelope in his hand. The envelope was padded out as though it contained a handkerchief or some other small but bulky thing.

"Here it is, do you want all of it?"

"No," said Keane softly. "Just enough for one dose."

Slycher opened the envelope. Onto a sheet of writing-paper he shook a minute quant.i.ty of purplish powder. It was coa.r.s.e powder. It was small crystals, really and looked like powdered amethyst.

"This is one dose of the antidote," he said. "May I ask what you intend to do with it?"

Keane looked at, and through, the man. His voice, when he answered, was a little hushed.

"I'm going to take it - and die. I'm going to find out where a man goes when he's dead. And I hope to meet another person in that place - and perhaps leave him there!"

Beatrice Dale, to whom he announced the same intention, when he returned home, was horrified.

"My G.o.d, Ascott! Meet Doctor Satan in death? You can't! The risk---"

"The risk is a little thing compared to what may happen if I don't," Keane said quietly. "Have you thought at all what this means? Doctor Satan, with the aid of Marxman's uncompleted formula, can visit the dead. From them he can obtain the secrets they died without revealing to any other mortal. Why, the world is his if he can't be stopped! Think of being able to discover the last, and perhaps greatest of the inventions Edison was working on when he died! Or the chance of learning from Captain Kidd's own lips where his treasure is hidden! Or of finding out the true political machinations of European diplomacy from any of the great statesmen who have recently pa.s.sed on! Satan can be emperor of earth with that knowledge!"

He looked at the pinch of purplish crystals.

"The gateway to death. Bring me a gla.s.s of water, will you? Even if nothing is accomplished beyond that gateway, even if I never come back from beyond it, it will be interesting to pa.s.s through it."

Midway between New York and Red Bank, in New Jersey, on a flat-topped knoll near the sea, there stands a rather hideous replica of a Rhenish castle built by an eccentric rich man long dead. The people living near there call it Furlowe's folly, and know that it has been untenanted and in bad repair for many years. What they did not know was that it had been purchased recently by a man who never made a personal appearance during the transaction. What they also did not know was that in a steel-lined room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the house, the purchaser, and his ugly a.s.sistant, often engaged at night in occupations that could have blanched their faces would they have looked on.

The two were there tonight.

One, the secret purchaser of Furlowe's Folly, was Doctor Satan, dressed in the masquerade it amused him to wear; red cloak covering his lean, powerful body from heels to throat; red mask over his face; red gloves on his hand; and on his head, the skullcap of red with the little projections, like horns, that completed his costume of Lucifer.

The other was Bostiff, who was a figure out of an ill.u.s.tration of Dante's Inferno. He had no legs. He hitched his gigantic, formidably muscled torso about by using his arms as legs and resting his weight on the calloused backs of his hands. His eyes, dull, dog-like stupidly brutal, followed the red-clad figure of his master constantly.

Doctor Satan was bending over a long, plain table which was littered with laboratory instruments. He was manipulating a small gla.s.s beaker in which a purplish, heavy liquid was rapidly drying into fine purplish crystals. From time to time, he consulted a wrinkled small bit of onion skin paper that had formerly been rolled up in a capsule.

He shook the dried crystals from the beaker onto the table.

"Ready, Bostiff," his harsh voice droned out.

Bostiff went to a corner of the steel-lined room. Then there was a low divan there. He wheeled it toward Doctor Satan, who lay down on it.

"For twelve hours, Bostiff," Doctor Satan Said, "My body is helpless, a dead thing. Remember that. And don't let anyone force a way in here.'"

"Yes, Master," Bostiff rumbled, gazing at the purplish crystals with dull fear in his eyes.

"On my first trip to the land of the dead," Satan said harshly, "I got from Hallowell the secret of the death ray. Now I can kill from a distance, and loot the possessions of the victim at leisure. This trip I expect to get from the recently a.s.sa.s.sinated dictator of Texas, Kelly Strong, full details of his plan to become dictator of the United States, and names of men he placed in key positions to carry out the scheme. He was ready to start up his plan in motion when he was killed. I shall carry on for him, and become dictator in his place. How would you like to be Secretary of State of the United States, Bostiff, with countless men - and women - dancing to your whims to avoid being killed or thrown into Jail?"

Bostiff licked his thick lips, and his dull eyes gleamed. Doctor Satan laughed arrogantly, and poured the purplish crystals into a gla.s.s of wine.

"Then guard my helpless body with your life, oh good and faithful servant," he said mockingly. "And - don't be so misguided as to attempt to remove my mask and see my face. No man may do that and live.'"

Doctor Satan raised the gla.s.s of wine, in which was the little death of Marxman's antidote, aid drank.

4.

Two people had taken Marxman's drug and died the little death. The dock laborer on whom Marxman had experimented, and Doctor Satan. Now, with Ascott Keane's taking of the purplish crystals, there were three.

His first sensation after swallowing the stuff was - pain.

His body ached as though every bone in it had been broken. He felt as though each nerve were being slowly rasped with red-hot files.

It hurt to die, was his last conscious thought. And after that, he seemed to fall into a deep and dreamless sleep that might have lasted a moment or two, or a thousand years, so that his next thought was the gateway of death is no black river, or cavern mouth guarded by the many-headed wat-dog, it is sleep.

But that was a dim thought, quickly lost in a fog of blind horror as his senses slowly struggled back to him. What was it that horrified him? For a long time, he did not know, could net define it.

He had been sitting at his ebony desk when he drank the antidote. When he regained conscious thought, he did not know whether he was sitting or standing; for he seemed to have no body, no weight. And that was odd, for when he opened his eyes he could see a body. He seemed as solid and weighty as when he had swallowed the drug; and was clothed as he had been then - in most prosaic blue surge.

Yet, the inability to tell whether he was standing or lying persisted. He simply was; he existed in - In what?

It was the answer to that which finally brought his blind feeling of horror to a head. For he seemed to exist, now in nothingness!

Beneath him he could see nothing. No ground, as we know it, or surface of any kind. Around him was - nothing. Over him was nothing. It was as though he had been transported, with the drinking of the purplish liquid, into the immensities of s.p.a.ce - and then had been seeing the stars wink out till none remained.

Yet, this vast nothingness in which he found himself, was not a thing of darkness. Vague gray light was diffused everywhere; like dim moonlight, which is not strong enough to outline things tangibly, yet gives an impression of so doing.

A nothingness of gray s.p.a.ce, with Ascott Keane existing in it, but not knowing whether he lay or stood because around him was no single thing by which to orient himself! Where was he? In the land of the dead! And the land of the dead, it seemed, was Nowhere!

Yet, he existed, saw himself as he had been last in life. He had, at least to his own perceptions, body and individuality.

But that may be simply the materialization of my thoughts of myself, he thought. If that is so, then I have the answer to the question; does living intelligence die? It does not. The body does, but not the intelligence directing it.

Now, as he existed in the s.p.a.celess, dimensionless, objectless gray nothingness, Keane became aware of sensation of other thoughts and feelings all around near him. Countless forces had their source near him. He felt as one feels when surrounded by a great host of people. Yet, he could see nothing, though the feel of being hemmed in by countless others grew stronger with each pa.s.sing minute. (Minute? That was a figurative term. For along with a loss of dimension and s.p.a.ce and outline as the living know them, Keane had lost all time-sense).

Maybe, thought Keane, I am invisible to them too. Perhaps only the thinking of myself make me perceptible, and that only to me.

The corollary notion came at once: But if that is so, then I should be able to see others if I think of them! Then it is directed thought which makes outline here in this gray place; which makes tangible outline.

Well, there was a way to test that. If he thought of someone he had known, now dead, that person might appear...

The most obvious person was his father, who had died when Keane was twelve, and whom he had admired as much as he loved. He thought of his father - heavyset, with keen gray eyes under bristling gray brows, and with stubby, powerful hands thrust always in his pockets.

And his father appeared before him!

Keane thought he cried aloud. But there was no sound in this land of the dead. He felt his throat swell with the impulse for sound, and that was all.

"Dad!"

"Ascott."

But there was no sound. Vibration, thought-waves - the means of communication were as intangible and cloaked in luminous gray mystery as everything else here. Keane only knew that he looked at his father, dead for twenty years, and felt him name him.

"So you have died, my son," emanated from the figure seemingly of solidified mist, that had appeared with Keane's thought of it. "Your mother will be anxious to see you - - -"

"My mother! Then everyone we knew - all people - have a life after death! They exist as they did on earth?"

Keane thought his father smiled. But he could not be sure, because he could not be sure if the face and form of his father were appearing before him, in actual sight - or behind his eyelids, formed by imagination.

"Not quite as on earth," his father said - or, rather radiated. "Here nothing has actual form. You and I, as well as all other living things, are bits of the great central plant of Life Force, which actuates everything that breathes. When we 'die', we are re-absorbed by the great life stream, though we know no more about it than a drop of water knows the meaning of the river that re-collects it after it has been drawn to the sky by the sun and released again in rain."

"But I see you! I see myself - - -"

"You see your thought of me, of yourself, not substance. There is no substance here. You will find out, now that you have died."

Keane thought: queer he doesn't know that I haven't really died; that I will return from this gray land. Then he realized that secret thoughts were as evident to this father as specially directed ones were.

For again he seemed to smile, and he said: "I know nothing of what goes on on earth. None of us do, which is contrary to the idea that I, at least, used to have: that the dead know all. Sometimes I would like to know, but I can't find out. The veil of death keeps us from communicating with the living as well as preventing them from communicating with us."

"But now there is communication between dead and living," Keane replied. "And that is why I'm here. On earth a man invented a war weapon which is useless without an antidote that makes it harmless to the men who use the weapon. The antidote, failing in its intended purpose, gives death for half a day to whoever swallows it. Another man, a person without conscience as well as without fear, stole his secret. He has used it to 'die' and while 'dead' to speak to those actually dead and get from them important information; though how he can do that when they must know his purpose is evil, and must try not to give it to him ---"

"Here where all thought either takes physical expression or can be interpreted as clearly as audible speech in life, no thought can remain hidden," his father informed him. "The man you describe has but to think his question, and whoever the thought is directed at will necessarily think the answer. For thought is involuntary. It cannot be controlled, and there is nothing physical here."

Thought involuntary? Keane repeated to himself. He did not believe that. It had always been his contention that thought could be controlled by a strong-willed man. But now he was to have immediate proof of his father's correctness.

It was miraculous to converse with him! It was miraculous, and appealing, to think of conversing with his dead mother too. But there was a thought more insistent than either of these; that was the thought (recalled strongly to him by speaking about Doctor Satan to his father) of the diabolical being he had come here to thwart.

And so, converse with his mother, and further converse with his father, were not to be. For with his thought of Doctor Satan - the vague outlines of his father faded, and other outlines began taking their place.

"Satan!" he thought. "Now - I will see his face.'"

But he had forgotten his own prosaic blue serge, the fabric that seemed to clothe him now as it had when he "died".

More and more plainly, the outlines of the figure driving his father from his mind appeared to him. And they were still as secretive as they had been on earth!

He saw a lean, red-cloaked shape, tall, with a red mask, and red-gloved hands. He saw no revealed feature save arrogant, glittering black eyes through the red mask's eye-holes.

Doctor Satan - still masked against disclosure of ident.i.ty!

But with the detestably familiar red form another was appearing. And, with the ability here to guess at all thought, even when that thought tries to conceal itself, he realized why.