The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (89 page)

After the fourth day of the phenomenon of the disappearing passengers, Mr. Steems’ lodgings began to get crowded—with suitcases, packages, storage batteries, saxophones in their cases, groceries of all kinds. One wall of his room was solidly banked with suitcases alone. After the fifth day, the space beneath his bed was filled, and a second wall partly obscured. On the sixth day, he began really to run out of space.

That day—the sixth—was the day the newspapers broke the story. The headlines were impressive.

52 MISSING IN CITY!
Monster at Work?

And there it was. Up to a given hour, fifty-two citizens of all ages and both sexes had disappeared from the city’s streets, and other disappearances were being reported almost hourly; a list of unfortunates who had seemingly gone out of existence like snuffed candle-flames.…

Mr. Steems read the list with a jaundiced eye. “I never seen none of ’em,” he said bitterly, to the missing persons’ luggage piled against the walls about him. “I don’t ask nobody their name an’ address when they get in my cab! It ain’t none of my business!” Then Mr. Steems again hurled the crushing, unanswerable question at an imaginary interrogator: “Whadda you want a guy to do? Stop runnin’ his taxi an’ starve to death?”

The newspaper account pointed out that none of the known missing had any reason to disappear. Some had vanished as early as eleven in the morning, and some as late as half-past midnight. All had dropped out of sight while on their way from one part of the city to another. Several had last been seen entering a taxicab. Anxious relatives were demanding that the police take drastic action. They demanded the questioning of taxidrivers—

“Yeah!” cried Mr. Steems furiously. “Not only that old bag hadda vanish, so Susie don’t speak to me no more, but now they’ gonna get everybody scared to ride in taxicabs!”

He slammed down the paper and went to the corner saloon. He had a beer. He believed that he thought better with a beer. It was a delusion. He brooded.

“Whadda they want?” he muttered oratorically a little later. “It’s them Commies start stories like that! Them newspaper guys, they’ Commies!”

He had another beer, and his rage mounted to the point where he dropped a nickel in the saloon pay-phone and furiously called a newspaper.

“Whadda you guys tryin’ to do?” he demanded shrilly. “You wanna drive a honest, self-respectin’ guy outa business? You go printin’ stuff about people vanishin’ outa taxicabs and how am I gonna make a livin’? You wanna drive a guy to crime?”

He hung up and went to his cab, muttering embitteredly. Three blocks, away he picked up a fat man for a fare. The fat man had an evening paper in his hand. He gave an address. He said in mock fear: “You’re not the Taxi Monster, are you?”

Mr. Steems let in the clutch with a violent jerk. He drove a full hundred yards, hissing like superheated steam awaiting release. Then he spoke in a tone of suppressed frenzy. He expressed his opinion of newspaper reporters in terms that would have curdled sulphuric acid. He worked up to scathing comment on people who made jokes at guys who were only trying to earn an honest living. His voice rose. His bitterness increased. When—it was then 9:45 P.M.—when he came to a red light and a large truck forced him to halt, he was expressing himself at the top of his lungs. There were stores on either side of the street. Their signs lit his face clearly.

A squad-car came to a halt beside him. Patrolman Cassidy said, “That’s him!” and got out and walked to the side of the cab. Mr. Steems was saying shrilly, “It’s guys like you—guys that because you got some money think you can raise hell with any guy that’s got to make a living—it’s guys like you that ruin this country! Yah, you capitalists—”

“Say,” said Cassidy, in Mr. Steem’s ear. “What’s the matter?”

Mr. Steems jumped. Cassidy! Outrage upon outrage! He said furiously: “That guy in the back asked me if I’d killed anybody in my cab yet, on accounta that fancy piece in the paper—”

Patrolman Cassidy looked. Then he said, “That guy in the back? What guy in the back?”

Mr. Steems turned. There was no guy in the back at all. But on the deerskin seat-cover was a watch, and a monogrammed fountain pen in silver and gold, and 75 cents in small silver, a hearing aid, three pants-buttons, a glittering pile of zipper-teeth, and a belt-buckle.

Patrolman Cassidy signaled to the squad-car. He stepped into the cab himself.

“We’re going to Headquarters,” he said in deadly calm. “I’ve been checking, and Susie’s mother ain’t the only one that was last seen getting into your cab, Steems! We’re goin’ to Headquarters, and don’t you try nothing funny on the way, you hear?”

Mr. Steems practically strangled upon his sense of injustice. He started toward Headquarters. The squad-car followed close.

When at last he could speak, Mr. Steems cried shrilly: “You ain’t got nothing on me!”

And there was no answer from the back of the cab.

* * * *

Mr. Steems can tell of these things. He can tell of his status after his lodgings had been searched, and—stacked against the wall, hidden under the bed, jammed into the closet—souvenirs turned up of seventy-one out of the seventy-two persons finally reported missing. The exception was, of course, Patrolman Cassidy, whose shield, service gun, whistle, handcuffs, brass knuckles and other assorted metallic mementos lay enshrined at Headquarters as a symbol of devotion to duty.

Mr. Steems became instantly, nationally famous as the Taxi Monster, murderer by wholesale. His downfall was ascribed to an untiring patrolman who, spurred on by love of a missing person’s daughter, had gone sleepless and followed clue after clue until finally he unmasked the monster—and had tragically become his final victim, done somehow to death on the way to Police Headquarters while a squad-car followed close behind.

Mr. Steems was held without bail on seventy-two charges of murder in the first degree. (It would have been seventy-three, had Mr. Binder’s vanishing been reported.) Mr. Steems’ frenziedly righteous protests went unheeded. He was sunk.

But there is justice for all in these United States, especially if publicity goes along with it. A Mr. Irving Castleman, Esquire was appointed by the court to defend Mr. Steems. He instantly pointed out that not one dead body had so far been found, nor had any of the missing persons been seen dead by anybody. The principle of
corpus delicti
therefore applied. He requested Mr. Steems’ instant release. The authorities countered with charges of grand larceny for each article found piled up in Mr. Steems’ lodgings. His lawyer submitted that no complaint of theft had been made by any missing person. Those objects might have been gifts to Mr. Steems. There was no proof to the contrary. Mr. Steems should be released.

It was not until the cops encouraged a lynching-mob to hang around outside the jail that Mr. Steems’ lawyer consented to let him stay in a cell as a suspicious person!

Things boomed. Feature writers, news commentators, and gossip columnists made the most of Mr. Steems. He was compared to Mr. Landru, to Mr. Cripps, to Bluebeard, Giles de Rais, and other mass murderers. His record topped them all. He was tendered the rewards of such eminence. Huge payments were offered for the story of his life and crimes, and his lawyer urged him to accept so he could pay his trial expenses. Three psychoanalysts explained his urge to kill as the result of childhood frustration. One psychoanalyst said it had developed because he was not frustrated as a child. Four sociologists declared that not Mr. Steems but society would be on trial when he stood before the bar. The telephone company set aside its biggest switchboard for the use of the press when the trial took place.

Susie hit the headlines. Not as Mr. Steems’ fiancee, however, but as the heartbroken sweetheart of his final victim. Three other women, however, claimed to be already married to him, and twenty-nine more wrote and suggested matrimony.

And then the bottom dropped out of everything.

Patrolman Cassidy, who had vanished from Mr. Steems’ cab on the way to Headquarters, came limping into that building in a state of bemused distress. He said he had fallen out of Mr. Steems’ cab and found himself minus shield, gun, handcuffs, pants-buttons, and the nails in his shoes, which came apart as he picked himself up. He’d come at once to Headquarters to report.…

An hour later, a fat man was found lying on the street out of breath. He insisted that he had kidded a taxicab driver about being the Taxi Monster, and the next thing he knew, he’d been thrown out on the street. Minus his watch, belt-buckle, hearing-aid, pants-zippers, shoe-nails, and other possessions.

* * * *

In quick succession other missing persons reappeared on the public streets. All were more or less disheveled. Each had lost all metal carried on his or her person. Each was convinced that he—or she—had not disappeared at all, but had merely gotten into a cab, instantly been thrown out, and immediately had come to report the offense. In four hours, nine missing persons reappeared—persons who had been missing for four to five days. In six hours, fifteen others appeared—having been missing from six days to seven. In twenty-four hours, fifty-eight out of the seventy-one known vanished persons had reappeared and unanimously identified Mr. Steems as associated with their mishap. And the end was not yet.

With keen intelligence, the police observed that those who returned were doing so in the reverse order from that in which they had disappeared. When, therefore, Susie’s mother appeared in outraged fury to report the theft of her shoes, wedding-ring and the steel springs out of her foundation garment by the villianous Mr. Steems—whom Susie would never speak to again—the police knew the end was near.

It was nearer than that. It had come. Mr. Binder found himself lying flat on his back on a public street. He had, he thought at first, fallen out of a taxicab. Then he realized that he had merely fallen into the soft, ancient deerskin over which he had been gloating a moment before at 5:07 in the afternoon of May 3rd. Now there was neither taxicab nor deerskin about. Moreover, it had suddenly become the middle of the night, and his watch and small change was gone, and his pants were falling down.…

Mr. Binder went home—a matter of two blocks—and opened the door with a spare key under a flowerpot. Mail and newspapers were piled in his front hall. He discovered that it was May 14th. He learned what had been going on. He’d gone out of his house, tumbled into the deerskin which proved compenetrability a practical matter—and now it was eleven days and some hours later.

Mr. Binder brewed a cup of strong tea and thought concentratedly. With the facts before him and his background of technical knowledge, it was not difficult to work out a theory which completely explained all the observed and reported facts. But this had more than merely intellectual interest. There was a legal aspect. Seventy-one people could sue…

Mr. Binder shuddered. Then he discovered that his name had not been listed as among the missing. Nobody had reported him gone because he lived alone. No souvenir of him had been found in Mr. Steems’ lodging because Mr. Steems had hocked his watch.

Mr. Binder came to a very intelligent conclusion. The thing for him to do was keep his mouth shut.

* * * *

Next day, however, he went over to see his friend Mr. McFadden.

“Now, what d’you know!” said Mr. McFadden. “I had it you were a victim of that there Taxi Monster. Where were you, anyway?”

“I’d like to be sure,” said Mr. Binder. “Listen, George!”

He told Mr. McFadden exactly what had happened. He had found, said Mr. Binder, the secret of compenetration. The atoms of solid things, even steel, are very small and relatively far apart, so that the solidest of objects has actually as much empty space in it as a dust-cloud; neutrons and cosmic rays go through without trouble. Ordinarily two solid objects can no more penetrate each other than two dust-clouds can penetrate each other. The dust-clouds are held together by the air on which the dust-particles float. Solid objects are held together by the electric and magnetic fields the individual atoms possess. But if the electric fields of atoms can be stopped from hindering, there is plenty of room for one seemingly solid object to penetrate another, and therefore for two or more things to be in the same place at the same time.

“And that,” said Mr. Binder, “is what I did. I couldn’t take away all the hindering of the atoms, George. I could just cut it down. But I fixed up a deerskin that used to be a throw on the parlor settee, and I could push anything but metal right through it without making a hole. Metal wouldn’t go through. It stayed behind. I had the deer-skin sort of magnetized, George, and the effect wouldn’t last forever, but I started over here with it to show you that I could make things compenetrate.”

“Does that tell me where you’ve been—if I believe it?”

“Well,” said Mr. Binder, considering. “I don’t know that it does. You see, George, I missed out on one thing. Normally those atom-fields hold each atom in its place up-and-down, and side-to-side, and fore-and-aft—if you get what I mean. When something—an atom—tries to push between them, they push right back. But when I hindered them from that, they still pushed. Only they pushed at right angles to up-and-down and side-to-side and fore-and-aft. At right angles to all of the other directions they ought to push in.”

“At right angles to all other directions?” said Mr. McFadden skeptically. “How could that be? ’Twould be a fourth dimension!”