Voice of the Conqueror. John Russell Fearn
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afterwards cashing-in on the undoubted opportunities afforded by such a lofty position.”
“Eh?” Emily sat up and stared, her darning forgotten. As for the younger ones, they simply regarded their father as though he had gone completely crazy.
“Master of the world,” Albert repeated, sitting back in the worn armchair and wagging his head to himself. “And the best of it is, nobody will know it’s me. It will sound as though some all-powerful visitor from outer space is giving the orders. And, what is more, getting them obeyed! Think how much good that will do in the world.”
“Why will it?” Emily asked stupidly. “And who’s going to obey you, anyhow?”
“Everybody who hears the voice. The Conqueror’s Voice! How’s that sound?”
“It sounds all right, but coming from you it’s a farce! The last thing I can picture is you as a conqueror!”
“I know. Practically everybody who knows me feels the same way.” Albert clenched his bony fists and his eyes were gleaming. “That’s what has been wrong all through my life. I’ve been taken for a meek, downtrodden fool, which is one reason why I’ve turned my scientific talent to righting the wrong that has been done me. From here on I intend to sit back and watch anybody do exactly as I say!”
Vera, the eldest child, gave a rather sardonic laugh. “Even if that could happen, dad—which it obviously can’t—you’d very soon find yourself run in if you tried it. It’d be a short cut to the booby-hatch. Delusions of grandeur, or something.”
Albert looked at her. “You listen to me, my girl. You’ve heard of a perfect crime, haven’t you? The kind of crime so brilliantly executed that nobody can tell how it was done?”
“Of course I have!”
“Well, this is similar. Only instead of being a crime, it’s a blessing, or intended to be. Nobody will ever be able to prove who’s back of it, and unless my calculations are utterly wrong, everybody will think an outer-space visitor is the culprit. Certainly nobody will suspect Albert Simpkins.”
Ethel tittered, and Vera gave her mother an anxious glance. “Mum, I don’t think dad’s very well. He can’t be! He talks of being master of the world, yet he can’t even make his own family obey him.”
“Under the old order I couldn’t, certainly,” Albert admitted, “but I’ve found a different way of controlling things. Just let me explain further.”
“By all means!” Emily exclaimed, still looking stunned. Getting quickly to his feet, Albert left the room, and he could well imagine the kind of conversation that was taking place during his absence. When he returned, he found each member of the family quiet, but studying him in suspicious wonder. The wonder deepened as he set upon the table his strange clock device with its outer mechanism of tubes, minute transformers, and intricate wiring.
“This thing operates over a distance of twenty feet,” he explained, plugging it into the nearby power point. “It will also operate from batteries. Now, Vera, my smart young lady, let’s see what sort of a brain you’ve got.”
“What!” Vera jumped up in alarm, her eyes wide in obvious fright. “Don’t you dare come near me with that thing, dad!”
“I’ve no need to. Your brain has already given its emanation. Want to see for yourself?”
Vera hesitated, noting that her father had been operating both a graded wheel and a kind of rheostat knob, meanwhile watching the queer behavior of the central needle on the “clock.”
“Don’t you go near it!” Emily warned—but Vera was young and therefore curious. She moved forward and peered at the instrument cautiously. The “clock” needle was pointing, she observed, to number 9865 amongst the scale readings, which went up to 10,000. The scale was plainly a professional job and the work of precision engineers, but the omission of two numbers had led the government to throw the gadget out—with a government’s usual prodigal extravagance—which had become Albert’s gain.
“This,” Albert explained, as Vera stood beside him and the rest of the family now moved up in curiosity, “is what I call a brain-frequency detector. In case you don’t know it, Vera—as you hardly can—your brain is constantly giving forth electric waves.”
“Yes?” Vera looked very dumb, like her mother. “Honest?”
“Not just your brain either, but everybody’s—a fact which I learned from my science magazines. What is more, just as Mother Nature never produces two sets of identical fingerprints, she also never produces two sets of identical brain frequencies. Of all the countless millions of souls there are in the world, every one has a different frequency.”
“Then why,” Vera asked, who was a cashier and proud of her mathematics, “does your dial only register up to ten thousand?”
“For ten thousand read a hundred million,” her father replied. “I’m making do with this throw-out dial and improvising the figures as need be. Your brain frequency isn’t nine eight six five, but nearer the hundred million mark, and these myriad hair-line divisions make up the intermediates. See?”
“No!” Emily declared flatly. “And I think it’s a lot of rot!”
“This clock thing,” Albert continued, undisturbed, “is the main detector needle. If I am within twenty feet of any living being and depress the control button here, the frequency of that person’s brain is immediately registered. From this instrument there goes forth an invisible beam direct to the person concerned—which insulates other people who might be present from also registering—and back along the beam on the principle of a radar echo comes the brain frequency. It is then registered in stopwatch fashion on this dial. So far, so good.”
“More than good,” Vera corrected, wondering. “It’s mighty near a miracle.”
“Having once found a brain frequency, I know exactly how to control that frequency.”
Silence. The younger members of the family wandered away, no longer interested. Vera and her mother remained, just to see how far this business was going to develop.
“It is an elementary fact,” Albert explained, “that when you have the given electrical frequency of any emanation, you can control it by the use of another frequency which is in exact ‘sympathy.’ That, basically, is the principle of remote control of airplanes, guided missiles, and so forth. In this case, though, I’m dealing with a more rarefied product—the emanation of thought waves.”
“You mean you can tell what people are thinking?” Emily asked, with sudden brightness, but Albert shook his head.
“No, dear, that’s telepathy. This is control. Hypnotism, if you like, mechanically applied instead of by the usual method. It amounts to this: a certain frequency is given off by the brain; an identical frequency is used to control it. It also follows that if thought waves can travel back along the original detector beam, other thought waves can travel forward along the control beam. And since the power of the control beam will be many times stronger than that of the detector, the outcome is obvious. Absolute mental control of the subject.”
“Sounds diabolical,” Vera said, pondering. “Like Svengali and that wench who sang for him. Trilby, wasn’t it?”
“This is scientific,” Albert said simply. “And so easy. I can command obedience as the mind behind the control beam. For instance, Vera, if I tuned in to your frequency, this is what would happen—”
Vera had not the least idea what did happen, but the rest of the family had. They watched her go to the armchair and, heavy though it was, she raised it with ease and put it on the broad table. Not satisfied with this, she made a leap that would have done credit to a circus acrobat, vaulting straight from the floor into the armchair seat. There she remained, singing in a clear soprano voice the immortal aria, “One Fine Day.”
“See what I mean?” Albert