Sinister Barrier (2 page)

“You mean that he was a drug addict?” Graham queried.

“I mean just that! I’ll gamble that the autopsy will show my hunch is correct.”

“Let me know if it does,” requested Graham.

Opening the doctor’s desk, he commenced to search carefully through the neatly arranged files of correspondence. There was nothing to satisfy his interest, nothing to which he could attach special significance. The letters without exception were orthodox, innocent, almost humdrum. His face registered disappointment as he shoved the files back into place.

Closing the desk, he transferred his attention to the huge safe built into the wall. Wohl produced the keys, saying, “They were in his right-hand pocket. I’d have looked through that safe, but was told to hold off for you.”

Graham nodded, inserted a key. The cumbersome door swung slowly on its bearings, exposed the interior. Graham and Wohl gave vent to simultaneous exclamations. Facing them hung a large sheet of paper bearing a hasty scrawl:

“Eternal vigilance is the impossible price of liberty. See Bjornsen if I go.”

“Who the deuce is Bjornsen?” snapped Graham, plucking the paper from the safe.

“Don’t know. Never heard of him.” Wohl gazed in frank puzzlement at the sheet, and said, “Give it to me. It carries marks of writing from a sheet above it. Look, the impressions are fairly deep. We’ll get a parallel light beam on it and see if we can throw those imprints into relief. With luck, they’ll prove easy to read.”

Graham handed him the sheet. Taking it to the door, Wohl passed it outside with a quick utterance of instructions.

They spent the next half-hour making careful inventory of the safe’s contents; a task that revealed nothing except that Webb had been a painstaking bookkeeper and had kept close watch on the business side of his activities.

Prowling around, Wohl found a small pile of ash in the grate. It was churned to a fine powder beyond all possibility of reclamation—the dust of potent words now far beyond reach.

“Grates are relics of the twentieth century,” declared Wohl. “It looks like he stuck to this one so that he could burn documents in it. Evidently he had something to conceal. What was it? From whom was he hiding it?” The telephone buzzed, and he hastened to answer it, adding, “If this is the station maybe they’ll be able to answer those questions for us.”

It was the station. The face of a police officer spread across the midget visor while Wohl pressed the amplifier stud so that Graham could listen in.

“We brought out the words on that sheet you gave us,” the officer said. “They’re pretty incoherent, but maybe they’ll mean something to you.”

“Read ’em out,” Wohl ordered. He listened intently while the distant police officer recited from a typewritten copy.

“Sailors are notoriously susceptible. Must extend the notion and get data showing how seaboard dwellers compare with country folk. Degrees of optical fixation ought to differ. Look into this at first opportunity. Must also persuade Fawcett to get me data on the incidence of goitre in imbeciles, schizophrenics especially. There’s wisdom in his madhouse, but it needs digging out.”

The reader looked up. “There are two paragraphs, and that’s the first.”

“Go on! Go on, man!” urged Graham, impatiently. The officer continued while Graham kept eagle eyes upon the visor, and Wohl looked more and more mystified.

“There is a real connection between the most unexpected and ill-assorted things. Oddities have links too surreptitious to have been perceived. Fireballs and howling dogs and second-sighters who are not so simple as we think. Inspiration and emotion and everlasting cussedness. Bells that chime unswung by human hands; ships that vanish in sunlit calm; lemmings that migrate to (the valley of the shadow. Arguments, ferocity, ritualistic rigmarole, and pyramids with unseen peaks. It would seem a nightmarish hodge-podge of surrealists at their worst—if I didn’t know Bjornsen was right, terribly right! It is a picture that must be shown the world—if it can be shown without massacre!”

“What did I tell you?” asked Wohl. He tapped his forehead significantly. “A narcotic nut!”

“We’ll see about that.” Bringing his face closer to the telephone’s scanner, Graham said to the distant officer, “File that sheet where it’ll be safe. Make two more typewritten copies and have them sent to Sangster, care of the U.S. department of special finance at their local office in Bank of Manhattan.”

He switched off the amplifier, pronged the receiver. The tiny television screen went blank.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go with you to the station,” he told Wohl.

They went out together; Wohl convinced that here was work for the local narcotic squad; Graham pondering the possibility of the two deaths being natural despite their element of mystery. As they crossed the sidewalk both felt a strange, nervous thrill. Something peered into their minds, grinned and slunk away.

Chapter 2

NO NEW INFORMATION AWAITED THEM at the station. Fingerprint men had returned from Mayo’s laboratory as well as from Webb’s office, had developed and printed their photographs. There were a mass of prints, some clear, some blurred. Most had been brought out with aluminum powder; a few—on fibrous surfaces—with iodine vapor. The great majority were prints left by the scientists themselves. The others were not recorded on police files.

Experts had gone with complete thoroughness through the dead men’s rooms and discovered not the slightest thing to arouse their own suspicions or confirm Graham’s. They reported with the faint air of men compelled to waste their time and talents on other people’s fads.

“There’s nothing left but the autopsy,” declared Wohl, finally. “If Webb’s a drug addict, the case is cleared up. He died while shooting at some crazy product of his own imagination.”

“And Mayo jumped into an imaginary bathtub?” queried Graham.

“Huh?” Wohl looked startled.

“I suggest an autopsy on both—if it’s possible to hold one on what’s left of Mayo.” Graham reached for his hat. His dark gray eyes were steady as they looked into Wohl’s blue ones. “Phone Sangster and let him know the results.” He hurried out with characteristic energy.

A pile of wreckage cluttered the corner of Pine and Nassau. Graham got a glimpse over the heads of the surging crowd, saw two crumpled gyrocars which appeared to have met in head-on collision. The crowd thickened rapidly, pushed, stood on tiptoe, murmured with excitement. He could sense their psychopathic tension as he passed. It was like moving through an invisible aura of vibrancy. The mob-noumen.

“Disaster is to crowds what sugar is to flies,” he commented to himself.

Entering the huge pile of Bank of Manhattan Building, he took a pneumatic levitator to the twenty-fourth floor. Pushing through a gold-lettered door, he said, “Hello, Hetty!” to the honey-blonde at the switchboard, and passed on to a door marked
Mr. Sangster.
He knocked and went in.

While Sangster listened quietly, he made a full report, concluded, “And that’s all there is, sir. It leaves us with nothing except my own doubts concerning Mayo, and the peculiar fact of Webb firing a pistol.”

“And it leaves us this person Bjornsen,” said Sangster, shrewdly.

“Yes. The police haven’t been able to get a line on him. They’ve hardly had sufficient time yet.”

“Do the postal authorities hold any mail for Webb, from this Bjornsen?”

“No. We thought of that. Lieutenant Wohl phoned and asked them. Neither the mail carrier nor the sorters remember letters from anyone named Bjornsen. Of course, this unknown—whoever he may be—might not have sent letters or, if he did, they may not have carried the sender’s name on the envelope. The only mail for Webb comprises two conventional letters from scientist friends of his college days. Most scientists seem to maintain a wide but erratic correspondence with other scientists, especially fellow experimenters working along parallel lines.”

“Which this Bjornsen may have been,” Sangster suggested.

“Now there’s an idea!” Graham pondered it a moment, then reached for the phone. He got his number, absent-mindedly pressed the amplifier stud, winced when the receiver promptly bellowed into his ear. Resting the receiver on Sangster’s desk, he said into the mouthpiece, “Is that the Smithsonian Institute? May I speak to Mr. Harriman?”

Harriman came on, his dark eyes level in the screen. “Hello, Graham. What can I do for you?”

“Walter Mayo is dead,” Graham told him, “and Irwin Webb, too. They passed away this morning within an hour of each other.” Harriman’s face expressed his sorrow while Graham gave him brief details of the tragedies. Graham asked, “D’you happen to know of any scientist bearing the name of Bjornsen?”

“Yes. He died on the seventeenth.”

“Died?” Graham and Sangster shot to their feet, and the former said, grimly, “Was there anything unusual about his end?”

“Not that I know of. He was an old man, well past his allotted span. Why do you ask?”

“Never mind. Do you know anything more concerning him?”

“He was a Swedish scientist specializing in optics,” replied Harriman, obviously mystified, “and he passed his prime twelve years ago. Some people thought him in his second childhood. His death gained eulogies in a few Swedish papers, but I have noticed no mention of it in the press over here.”

“Anything else?” Graham persisted.

“Not much. He was rather obscure. If I remember aright, he commenced his decline when he made himself a laughing-stock with some paper he read to the 2003 International Scientific Convention, at Bergen. It was a lot of gibberish about visual limitations, with plenty of spooks and djinns thrown in. Hans Luther also brought the vials of wrath on his own head by being the only scientist of any prominence to treat Bjornsen seriously.”

“And who is this Hans Luther?”

“A German scientist, and a very clever man. He’s dead. He died not long after Bjornsen.”

“What, another?” Graham and Sangster shouted together.

“What’s the matter?” Curiosity was the keynote of Harriman’s tones. “You don’t expect scientists to live forever. They die just like other people, don’t they?”

“When they die just like other people,” replied Graham, dourly, “we feel regrets and nurse no suspicions. Do me a favor, Harriman. Get me a complete list of all the internationally known scientists who have died since the first of May, together with every cogent detail you can rake up.”

Harriman blinked with surprise. “I’ll phone you as soon as I can,” he promised, and rung off. Almost at once he came on again with, “I forgot to tell you that Luther is said to have died in his Dortmund laboratory while gabbling some incoherent nonsense to his local paper. He had a heart attack. His death was attributed to dementia and cardiac exhaustion, both brought on by overwork.”

He hung on the line, watching for the effect, openly hoping for information. Then he gave it up, repeated, “I’ll phone you as soon as I can.” He disconnected.

“This thing gets crazier the further we look into it,” commented Sangster. He flopped into his chair, tilted it back on its hind legs, frowned his dissatisfaction. “If the deaths of Mayo and Webb weren’t natural, they certainly weren’t supernatural. Which makes plain, straightforward homicide the only alternative.”

“Murder, for what?” inquired Graham.

“That’s just the hell of it! Where’s the motive? There simply isn’t any! I can imagine half a dozen countries who might regard the super-swift amputation of America’s best brains as a suitable prelude to war, but when Swedish and German scientists get dragged in—with maybe a dozen more nationalities on the list Harriman’s compiling—the entire situation becomes complicated to the point where it’s absolutely fantastic.” Picking up his typewritten copy of Webb’s notes, he waved it dismally. “As fantastic as all this stuff.” He cocked a speculative eye at the brooding Graham. “Your hunches started us on this hunt after heaven-alone-knows-what. Have you got any ideas to back them up?”

“None,” Graham confessed. “Not one. We haven’t yet found enough facts to provide basis for a plausible theory. It’s up to me to dig up more details.”

“From where?”

“I’m going to see this fellow Fawcett whom Webb mentioned in his jottings. He ought to be able to tell me something interesting.”

“Do you know Fawcett?” Sangster registered surprise.

“I’ve never heard of him. But Doctor Curtis, who is Webb’s half-sister, may be able to put me in touch. I know Doctor Curtis well.”

A slow smile came into Sangster’s heavy face. He said, “How well?”

Graham grinned and replied, “Not as well as I’d like.”

“Humph! So that’s the way it is! Combining business with pleasure, eh?” He made a negligent gesture. “Oh, well, best of luck! If only you can nail down something more substantial than mere suspicions we can get the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the job.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” The telephone shrilled as Graham reached the door. He hesitated, one hand on the door-knob, while the other grabbed the receiver, laid it on the desk, operated the amplifier.

Wohl’s features glowed into the screen. He could not see Graham who was standing outside the scanner’s angle of vision. He stared straight at Sangster while he spoke.

“Webb must have had the itch.”

“The itch?” echoed Sangster, confusedly. “Why?”

“He’d painted his left arm, from shoulder to elbow, with iodine.”

“What the devil for?” Sangster threw an appealing look at the listening Graham.

“Nothing. There wasn’t anything the matter with his arm. My theory is either he had the itch or he did it to gratify his artistic instincts.” Wohl’s tough face cracked into a hard grin. “We’ve not finished the autopsy yet, but I thought I’d better let you know about this. When you’ve given it up, I can pose you another just as daffy.”

“Out with it, man!” snapped Sangster.

“Mayo had the itch, too.”

“Do you mean that he’d painted his arm as well?”

“Yes, with iodine,” confirmed Wohl, maliciously enjoying himself. “Left arm, shoulder to elbow.”

Staring fascinatedly at the screen, Sangster drew in a long, deep breath, said, “Thanks!” He replaced the receiver, gave Graham a despairing look. “I’m on my way,” said Graham.

Doctor Curtis had a strict, professional air of calm efficiency which Graham liked to ignore. She had also a mop of crisp black curls and a curvaceousness which he liked to admire with frankness she found annoying.

“Irwin had been behaving strangely for more than a month,” she told him, unnecessarily eager to keep his attention on the subject about which he had come. “He would not confide in me despite my concern for him, which, I’m afraid, he chose to regard as feminine curiosity. Last Thursday, his peculiar attitude strengthened to a point of such ill-concealed apprehension that I began to wonder if he were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I advised him to take a rest.”

“Did anything occur last Thursday which might have caused him to worry unduly?”

“Nothing,” she assured with confidence. “Or nothing that might affect him so seriously as to make him unbalanced. Of course, I must admit that he was extremely upset by the news of the death of Doctor Sheridan, but I don’t see why that—”

“Excuse me,” Graham interrupted. “Who was Sheridan?”

“An old friend of Irwin’s. A British scientist. He died last Thursday, of heart disease, I understand.”

“And still they come!” Graham murmured.

“I beg your pardon?” Doctor Curtis opened large, black eyes inquiringly.

“Just a comment,” he evaded. Leaning forward, his muscular features intent, he asked, “Did Irwin have a friend or acquaintance named Fawcett?”

Her eyes widened more. “Oh, yes. He is Doctor Fawcett, the resident specialist at the State Asylum. Surely he cannot be involved in Irwin’s death?”

“Not at all.” He noted the obvious puzzlement which now overlay her normally tranquil pose. He was tempted to take advantage of it and put several more questions he wished to ask, but some queer subconscious quirk, some subtle hint of warning, made him desist. Feeling himself a fool to obey his inward impulses, he went on, “My department has a special interest in your brother’s work, and his unfortunate end has left us with several features to clear up.”

Apparently satisfied, she gave him her cool hand. “Do let me help you.”

He held it until she had to drag it away. “You help by boosting my morale,” he chided.

Leaving her, he ran down the steps leading from the twentieth floor surgery, reached the skyway which ran past mighty building-piles at a level three hundred feet above the ground.

A police gyrocar whined along the skyway, stopped before the surgery just in time to meet him as he got to the bottom of the steps. Lieutenant Wohl thrust his head out of its side window.

Wohl said, “Sangster told me you’d be here. I’ve come to pick you up.”

Clambering into the sleek machine, Graham asked, “Has something broken loose? You look like a hound-dog on the scent.”

“One of the boys discovered that Webb’s and Mayo’s last phone calls were both made to some big brain named Professor Dakin.” He pressed the accelerator stud, the two-wheeled speedster plunged forward, its encased gyroscope emitting a faint hum. “This Dakin lives on William Street, right near your own hideout. Know him?”

“Like my own hands. You ought to know him, too.”

“Me? Why?” Wohl whirled the wheel, took a skyway bend with a cop’s official recklessness. The gyrocar kept rigidly upright while its occupants rolled sidewise in their seats. Graham clung to the hand-rail. Four other drivers on the skyway got the momentary meemies as they bulleted past, glared after them.

Pulling in some breath, Graham said, “When did the police abandon the moulage method of making casts?”

“Five years back.” Wohl aired his knowledge. “We now photograph impressions with stereoscopic cameras. Impressions on fibrous surfaces are recorded in relief with the aid of the parallel light beam.”

“I know all that. But why is that method now used?”

“Because it’s handier and absolutely accurate.”

“Take it on from there,” suggested Graham.

“It’s been used ever since they found a way to measure stereoscopic depth by means of… heck!”—he risked a swift and apologetic glance at his passenger, and concluded—“the Dakin stereoscopic vernier.”

“Correct. This fellow is the Dakin who invented it. My department financed his preliminary work. Frequently we get results for our money.”

Wohl refrained from further comment while he concentrated on handling his machine. William Street slid rapidly toward them, its skyscrapers resembling oncoming giants.

With a sharp turn which produced a yelp of tormented rubber from the rear wheel, the gyrocar spun off the skyway and onto a descending corkscrew. It whirled down the spirals with giddying effect.

They hit ground level still at top pace, and Wohl straightened out, saying, “Those whirligigs sure give me a kick!”

Graham swallowed a suitable remark, his attention caught by the long, low, streamlined, aluminum-bronze shape of an advancing gyrocar. It flashed toward them along William Street, passed with an audible swish of ripped air, shot up the ramp to the corkscrew from which they’d just emerged. As it flashed by, Graham’s sharp eyes registered the pale, haggard face staring fixedly through the machine’s plastiglass windshield.